ABC News announced Monday it had launched on Roku, the streaming video service. The network’s vice president of digital, Colby Smith, said it was “another big step in putting our audience in control of how and when they get their news.”
ABC joins networks including CBS News, NBC News, Fox News and Sky News on Roku, reaching an audience of 10 million Roku players.
Here’s Smith’s email to ABC News staff, in full:
Team
I have some exciting updates about our digital business to share with everyone.
Starting today, ABC News is now available as a streaming channel on Roku players and Roku TV models, a major expansion onto millions of connected devices and our first ABC News streaming channel on Smart TVs.
Today is another big step in putting our audience in control of how and when they get their news. Roku users now have ABC News live video and on demand content, local news from several major markets and a wide range of historical video footage from ABC News’ archives. During breaking news and special events, Roku customers will have immediate access to multiple content streams, live 24/7.
The demand for video is growing tremendously and through all of your digital efforts we’ve been able to serve even more video content than ever before. Roku is a leading streaming platform, with more than 10 million players sold across the U.S., and we’re thrilled to have ABC News live on the Roku platform today.
I also want to share that on February 25th we extended the ABC News app for Apple TV to international audiences. The app is now available in over 100 countries across the world, and we’ve already seen incredible results with viewership on the device practically doubling overnight.
We’re continuing to find new opportunities to put video front and center and offer a variety of ways for our audience to engage with ABC News content – from desktop and tablets to mobile and connected devices – and starting today Smart TVs.
A special thanks to Doug Vance, Steve Hsu and the visionaries on the product team for building this new mode of distribution, providing our amazingly creative journalists yet another opportunity to push the boundaries of storytelling and reach an even wider audience.
Colby