Samsung TV / information / KGET+
REVIEW
KGET+ brings Bakersfield's NBC newscasts to the Samsung TV without a cable bill.
Nexstar's free ad-supported app for KGET 17 collapses the local-news antenna ritual into a Tizen tile — useful in Kern County, irrelevant outside it, and thin on anything beyond newscasts.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
KGET+ is one of more than two hundred near-identical Nexstar local-station apps that have appeared on smart-TV stores over the last eighteen months, and on a Samsung Tizen set in Bakersfield it is exactly what it claims to be: a free, no-login surface for KGET 17’s newscasts and weather segments. The Tizen build arrived in April 2026, weeks behind the Roku and Fire TV versions, and inherits both the strengths and the limits of the Nexstar template.
The strengths are real for the right viewer. A Kern County household can pull the 5 AM, noon, 5 PM, 6 PM, and 11 PM newscasts live, replay them on demand, and watch the station’s meteorology team’s forecast on a screen large enough to make the radar useful during a high-wind event. None of that requires an antenna, a cable subscription, or a TV-everywhere login. For cord-cutters in Bakersfield who still want local news, the proposition is straightforward and the app delivers on it.
The limits are equally real. KGET+ carries no NBC primetime — affiliate licensing keeps “Today”, “NBC Nightly News”, and the network entertainment lineup outside the app, so this is not a station replacement, only a newscast feed. There is no programme guide, no continue-watching row, and no Bixby integration. Outside the Bakersfield DMA the app has no audience, yet Samsung’s store surfaces it nationally. For the people it serves, KGET+ does its one job. For everyone else, it is a tile to ignore.
KGET+ does one job for one geography — surface Bakersfield NBC newscasts on a Samsung TV without an antenna or a cable login.
FEATURES
KGET+ is the Tizen build of Nexstar's local-station streaming app for KGET-TV, the NBC affiliate serving Bakersfield and Kern County, California. The app is free, no login, no subscription — ad-supported throughout. Released to the Samsung TV store in April 2026 alongside the rollout of similar Nexstar station apps across the country.
Programming centres on KGET 17's morning, midday, evening, and late newscasts streamed live, plus on-demand replays of recent broadcasts and a rotating set of weather segments from the station's meteorology team. There is no full-network NBC programming inside the app — primetime entertainment, "Today", and "NBC Nightly News" are not part of the package. KGET+ is local news and weather, not a substitute for the broadcast feed.
The Tizen build is built from the same template Nexstar uses across its 200-plus owned-and-operated stations. Layout is a horizontal row of categories — Live, Latest, Weather, On-Demand — navigable by the Samsung remote's d-pad. Bixby voice search is not wired in; Samsung universal-search results from the home shelf do not surface KGET+ content.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The premise lands. A Bakersfield household can mount a Samsung TV without an antenna, skip the YouTube TV bill, and still pull live KGET 17 newscasts at 5 AM, noon, 5 PM, 6 PM, and 11 PM. The app launches in three or four seconds on a current Samsung mid-range, the live stream picks up within five seconds of opening Live, and on-demand replays start without a pre-roll on most segments.
The weather section is the strongest use case. KGET's meteorology team's daily forecast videos, the seven-day outlook, and the radar are easier to surface here than on the kget.com web view — and a TV-sized weather radar is genuinely more readable than a phone screen during a Kern County wind event or a Tehachapi snow advisory.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
Geography is the entire ceiling. Outside the Bakersfield DMA there is no reason to install KGET+, and Samsung's Tizen store does not gate visibility by region — the app surfaces in search nationwide, where it serves no audience. Inside the DMA, the app is missing two things every viewer expects: live network primetime (an NBC-affiliate licensing constraint, not a Nexstar choice) and a programme guide. Without either, KGET+ becomes a newscast-replay app rather than a TV-station replacement.
Ad load is heavy in the typical Nexstar pattern — two pre-rolls before most on-demand segments, mid-roll breaks on longer newscasts, and the same three or four advertisers cycling through every commercial pod. The Tizen build also lags the Roku and Fire TV versions on cosmetic polish: thumbnails occasionally fail to load, the on-demand list does not remember scroll position between sessions, and there is no continue-watching row.
CONCLUSION
Install KGET+ if you live in Kern County and want NBC 17's newscasts on a Samsung TV without an antenna or a pay-TV login. Skip it everywhere else. The app does one narrow job competently and makes no attempt to do more — which is the right scope for a local-station streaming product, even if it limits the audience to a single Central California valley. Watch for whether Nexstar adds a programme guide and continue-watching state in the next revision; both would meaningfully raise the score.