The Weather Channel TV app has something CNN+ didn’t: a live feed

You’d think CNN+ wouldn’t come with a live stream of CNN the cable channel, right? Well, it didn’t, and that was likely a factor in CNN+’s startlingly fast demise last month. The Weather Channel’s new direct-to-consumer app, however, doesn’t repeat CNN+’s mistake.

The Weather Channel TV app launched without fanfare (as first reported by The Streamable) a few weeks ago, and it does offer a live feed of the Weather Channel on basic cable. Best of all, anyone can sign up for the app, no cable subscription needed.

While you won’t have to authenticate with a pay-TV to use The Weather Channel TV app, you will need to fork over a little cash. The service costs $2.99 a month or $29.99 annually, following a seven-day free trial.

The Weather Channel app is also only available on five connected-TV platforms: Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Samsung smart TVs, and Xfinity Flex, leaving Apple TV users high and dry. The app isn’t available on desktop PCs or smartphones, either.

The Weather Channel TV app boasts many of the features you’d expect from a weather app, including severe weather alerts, current conditions and local forecasts, full-screen weather and radar maps, and on-demand news videos and original shows. 

But the app’s best feature is both obvious and simple: a live stream of The Weather Channel, the same one that airs on basic cable, except you no longer need a cable subscription to watch it.

CNN+ arrived on the scene in March with a decent amount of live news coverage and a clutch of original programming. Crucially–and confusingly–however, the streaming service didn’t offer a simulcast of the flagship CNN cable channel. 

CNN execs (many of them now gone in the wake of the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger) argued that CNN+ was intended for CNN “super fans,” but only a handful of news fanatics showed up, and CNN+ went dark less than a month after its debut.

There’s another “plus” service with a CNN+-type problem: ESPN+, which delivers its fair share of live sports (including Monday Night Football) and on-demand shows, but no live stream of ESPN, ESPN2, or ESPN’s other cable channels (although there are signs that an all-streaming EPSN service could be coming soon). 

But while The Weather Channel TV app isn’t a “plus” like CNN+ or ESPN+, it doesn’t have to be–it simply is The Weather Channel, in all its wind-whipped glory. Talk about a streaming service that sells itself.