Roku / news_and_weather / CBS 42+ WIAT 42 ALABAMA NEWS
REVIEW
CBS 42+ puts Birmingham's tornado coverage on the right screen.
Nexstar's free Roku channel for WIAT 42 carries the central Alabama CBS newscasts, the Storm Team weather block, and live cut-ins during severe weather. In tornado country, that's not a feature — it's the entire reason to install it.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
CBS 42+ WIAT 42 Alabama News
NEXSTAR BROADCASTING, INC.
OUR SCORE
7.2
ROKU
★ 5.0
PRICE
Free
Local-affiliate Roku channels exist on a different scoring curve from prestige TV apps. Nobody installs CBS 42+ to discover a new series. They install it so that on the Tuesday night in late March when the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning for Jefferson County, the 42-inch Roku in the living room can show the Storm Team’s coverage without anyone hunting for an antenna or logging into a cable account they cancelled in 2019.
By that standard — the only standard that matters for a local-news channel in central Alabama — CBS 42+ does its job. The live tile loads in a few seconds, the stream holds through long severe-weather cut-ins, and the channel does not ask for credentials at any step. The newscast is the same one the station has been running on broadcast since 1996. Nexstar’s Roku build is the cheapest, lowest-friction way to put it on a modern television.
Everything else is a rounding error. The on-demand library is fine. The interface is the Nexstar template. The ad load is what it is. The thing the channel exists to do, it does — and in Birmingham, in April, that is not a small thing.
A Birmingham household installs CBS 42+ for one reason. The night the sirens go off, it had better launch on the first press.
FEATURES
CBS 42+ is the Roku streaming channel for WIAT channel 42, the Nexstar-owned CBS affiliate covering Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Anniston, and the broader central Alabama designated market. The channel is free, ad-supported, and asks for no login — installing it from the Roku Channel Store drops the viewer straight into a live tile.
Programming follows the broadcast clock. The morning block "CBS 42 News This Morning", the midday update, the 5 and 6 p.m. local newscasts, and the 10 p.m. late edition all carry live. Between them, the channel loops a rotating feed of the day's stories. An on-demand library separates news, weather, sports, and the long-running "Talk of Alabama" lifestyle hour.
Severe-weather coverage from the CBS 42 Storm Team pre-empts the regular schedule when conditions warrant — the same wall-to-wall block that runs on the broadcast feed, mirrored straight into the Roku tile. Mid-roll ads run inside news segments through Nexstar's national stack. Released late 2024, last updated March 2026.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The use case that justifies installing CBS 42+ is the one nobody wants to need. Central Alabama sits on the eastern edge of Tornado Alley, the Storm Team's overnight coverage is what the market trusts, and Roku is the screen the family ends up watching when the power goes out on the cable box. The channel launches fast, holds the stream through long cut-ins, and does not gate access behind a cable login the way most network apps do.
Beyond that, the on-demand index is organised by show rather than by topic. That is the right call for a local-news audience — viewers come looking for the 10 p.m. broadcast they missed, not a tagged playlist of "education stories from this week".
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The channel inherits the standard Nexstar shell, which means it looks identical to KXNEWS+, KLST+, and three dozen other O&O station apps. Nothing here is wrong; nothing here is particular to Birmingham, either. The branding stops at the logo and the colour bar. A Birmingham viewer is not going to confuse it with another market, but the channel could earn its keep with a genuine Magic City touch — a permanent UAB football tile, a Talladega week front page, anything that signals the newsroom is in this city specifically.
Outside severe weather, the ad load inside news segments is noticeably heavier than it is on the broadcast feed itself. Two-minute on-demand clips routinely carry a 30-second pre-roll. That is the cost of a free product, but it is also the friction that keeps casual viewers from settling in for a full newscast.
CONCLUSION
Install CBS 42+ if you live in central Alabama and want the local CBS newscast on the TV without paying for cable. The whole reason to keep it on the home screen is the severe-weather coverage — and the right time to test that it works is well before the first tornado warning of the year. For viewers outside the WIAT market, there is nothing here. That is the correct design for a local-affiliate channel.