Roku is Adding Subscriptions to Premium Services From Showtime and Others
Roku has a large library of free content available, from TV shows and movies, but it looks like a bit of a premium mix is heading to the platform as well. TechCrunch has the report out this week that Roku is officially adding premium subscription content from a variety of sources. That includes Showtime, CuriosityStream, EPIX, Dropout from College Humor, Baeble Music, Magnolia Selects, Smithsonian, Fusion, Viewster Anime, Noggin, and several others. “Offering a centralized place to subscribe to paid content is a fairly significant change for Roku’s platform where, historically, viewers would download and add apps (“channels,” in Roku’s lingo) to their Roku homepage for each service they wanted to watch. Some of those channels require subscriptions, like Netflix and Hulu, while others offer free content.” This is a pretty big change for Roku and should align the company more in the likes of Hulu, Amazon Prime, and other options out there. Interestingly enough, it has also be...