Roku / news_and_weather / OZARKSFIRST+ KOLR NEWS
REVIEW
OzarksFirst+ brings KOLR's Springfield newscast to the living-room TV.
Nexstar's CBS affiliate in southwest Missouri ships its local news, weather, and sports onto Roku in a free, ad-supported channel. It works the way a local-news channel should work, and not much more than that.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
OzarksFirst+ KOLR News
NEXSTAR BROADCASTING, INC.
OUR SCORE
7.0
ROKU
★ 5.0
PRICE
Free
Roku’s news_and_weather aisle is where America’s local TV stations have quietly rebuilt the audience they lost when cord-cutting hit. Every Nexstar, Sinclair, and Tegna affiliate ships a free Roku channel under a ”+” brand — News4JAX+, FOX23+, OzarksFirst+ — and together they keep the late local newscast alive on televisions that no longer get a cable signal. The economics are simple: the station already produces the content, the channel costs almost nothing to ship, the pre-roll inventory pays for itself.
OzarksFirst+ is KOLR 10’s entry in that quiet rebuild. KOLR is the CBS affiliate covering Springfield, Missouri, and a chunk of the Ozark Plateau down into northern Arkansas — a small market by national standards, big enough that local news, weather, and high-school sports still matter to the people who live there. The Roku channel is how those viewers get the 10 o’clock newscast onto a TV that doesn’t have an antenna or a cable box anymore.
There is nothing surprising in this channel and nothing wrong with that. A local-news app on a TV stick should load fast, show the weather radar, post the newscast after it airs, and stay out of the way. OzarksFirst+ does each of those things. It is small-market local journalism doing the modern thing — putting the 10 o’clock news on the TV without a cable box — and on those terms it works.
OzarksFirst+ is a small market doing the modern thing — putting the 10 o'clock news on the TV without a cable box.
FEATURES
OzarksFirst+ carries KOLR 10's local newscasts on demand, a 24/7 streaming news channel, weather radar tied to the OzarksFirst forecast desk, and clip libraries split by topic — top stories, weather, sports, and the Ozarks lifestyle segments KOLR airs alongside its CBS network programming. The newscasts post after they air rather than streaming the linear broadcast feed.
The channel is free and ad-supported. There is no sign-in, no subscription, no cable-credential gate. Pre-roll and mid-roll spots play before and during longer segments; short clips run unbroken. Roku voice search reaches into the channel for show names and on-screen anchors.
This is one of more than a hundred Nexstar local-station channels built on the same chassis — sister stations across the country ship near-identical apps under different "+" brands, which is why the navigation, ad cadence, and remote handling all feel familiar if you've used another Nexstar affiliate's Roku channel.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The channel does the one job a local-news Roku app exists to do: it puts the late local newscast on the TV without a cable box. For an Ozarks household that has cut the cord but still wants the 10 p.m. KOLR weather segment after a storm rolls through southwest Missouri, that's the entire value proposition, and OzarksFirst+ delivers it for free.
The weather radar tile is the second reason most viewers will open the channel. It loads quickly, animates without stuttering on a current Roku stick, and is easier to read on a 50-inch screen than the OzarksFirst website is on a phone during severe weather.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The ad load is heavy for a free channel, and the same handful of national pre-rolls repeat through a long viewing session — a known weakness of Nexstar's shared ad-insertion stack across its affiliate channels. There is no way to skip, no way to reduce frequency, no premium tier that removes them.
The channel posts newscasts after they air rather than offering a live linear feed of KOLR 10. Viewers expecting to tune in to the broadcast as it happens — the way an antenna or a cable subscription would deliver it — will not find that here. For breaking severe weather, the radar map helps; the actual anchor coverage lags the on-air broadcast by minutes to hours.
CONCLUSION
OzarksFirst+ is built for one viewer: a Springfield-area resident who has cut the cord, still wants KOLR's local journalism, and is willing to sit through the ads to get it. For that viewer the channel is the right install and the price is right. For anyone outside the KOLR signal area, there is nothing here.