More TV for Apple TV, this time from ABC, which has a new news app for Apple’s TV box. It’s the sixth Apple TV app from ABC owner Disney, whose CEO, Bob Iger, is an Apple board member and a longtime Apple ally.
ABC News Comes to Apple TV, for Free
There’s a catch, of course. But it may not be a deal-breaker.
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
As for the software itself? Bear in mind that there are essentially two kinds of Apple TV apps — those that let you watch stuff for free, and those that only let you watch if you can prove that you’re “authenticated,” which usually means that you have a pay-TV subscription.
ABC News on Apple TV is in the former category, which means that in most cases, you can’t use it to watch whatever ABC is showing on its broadcast channels, because ABC gets paid by station owners and pay-TV providers for that stuff.
But ABC will let you watch clips from current shows, as well as archives, and it will let you watch digital-only feeds that it streams out of ABCNews.com.
And if you want to watch ABC’s “real” news shows on Apple, in real time, you can do that too, via the Watch ABC app. But that one you’ll have to pay for.
Apple also added apps from PBS KIDS, Willow and AOL today.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
