Roku announced today (May 1) that the streaming platform is buying the streaming service Frndly TV.
It's another feather in the cap of Roku, which looks to have big year with new streaming devices and features coming in 2025.
The Frndly TV service is a relative newcomer having been founded in 2019 out of Denver, Colorado. Frndly offers its subscribers access to more than 50 live TV channels including A&E, History Channel, Lifetime, and the Game Show Network. It also comes with on-demand content and recording with an unlimited cloud-based DVR starting at $6.99/month.
“Frndly TV’s impressive growth and expertise in direct-to-consumer subscription services make it a compelling addition to Roku,” said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku in a press release. He added that Frndly TV's live content offerings are part of Roku's focus on growing the platform.
Frndly pitches itself as the "most affordable live TV streaming service in America." Based on what we could find the channels on offer are all ones that Frndly considers as offering "feel-good programming."
Currently, Frndly TV is available on several platforms including Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Google TV, Apple TV, Samsung, Vizio, and Roku as well as on mobile. Roku says that it will "continue to be available" in those places.
"We believe this combination will help us accelerate subscription growth, given the alignment in core customer demographics and Roku’s leadership position in the connected TV ecosystem," said Andy Karofsky, Frndly TV CEO and co-founder, who is supposed to stay on after the sale.
From what we can tell, the subscriptions tiers that Frndly TV offers won't change. Currently, the service offers three subscription levels; Basic, Classic and Premium. The basic level gets you SD quality video with live TV and on demand offerings. The Classic ($7.99/month) level ups the video quality to HD, two "simultaneous screens" and three months of unlimited DVR recording. The Premium ($9.99/month) gets 9 months of DVR recording and four simultaneous screens.
Every channel the service offers is available on each tier.
It's an interesting acquisition since Roku already offers a number of live channels alongside a rotating selection of free shows and movies and Roku Originals that can be streamed on the best Roku devices.
However, right now, Roku doesn't offer any DVR type services. That said, it isn't clear from Roku's press release how Frndly will be integrated with the Roku service beyond the existing app that is already available.
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