Samsung TV / information / OZARKSFIRST+
REVIEW
OzarksFirst+ brings Springfield's local news to Samsung TVs without much ceremony.
Nexstar's KOLR/KOZL FAST channel for the Ozarks lands on Tizen as a free, signed-in livestream-and-VOD app aimed squarely at viewers in the Springfield-Branson DMA.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
OzarksFirst+
NEXSTAR MEDIA INC
OUR SCORE
6.4
SAMSUNG TV
★ —
PRICE
Free
OzarksFirst+ is the kind of app smart-TV platforms exist to host: a regional broadcaster’s free streaming channel, built once for every TV OS, aimed at the few hundred thousand households who care about a single local newsroom. The Tizen build arrived in April 2026, joining Nexstar’s existing Roku, Fire TV, and Apple TV versions for KOLR 10 and KOZL in Springfield, Missouri.
The proposition is narrow on purpose. If you live in the Ozarks, OzarksFirst+ gives you the 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts on demand, a 24/7 livestream of the rolling Ozarks First feed, weather coverage during severe-storm events, and high-school sports clip rails. If you don’t live in the Ozarks, none of that has any value to you, and the app makes no effort to pretend otherwise — there is no national news rail, no syndicated content, no out-of-market fallback.
That focus is the honest review. OzarksFirst+ does one thing — pipe Springfield’s local newscasts to a Samsung TV — and does it without obvious failure modes. The livestream comes up fast, the VOD library is current, and the My Nexstar login carries across the company’s other regional apps. The omissions are the standard FAST-app omissions: heavy ad load, no DVR, no restart-from-beginning on live, and a content universe that ends at the DMA boundary. For the Springfield-area Samsung household that’s the entire point. For everyone else, this isn’t the app you’re looking for.
OzarksFirst+ does one thing — pipe Springfield's local newscasts to a Samsung TV — and does it without obvious failure modes.
FEATURES
OzarksFirst+ is the Samsung Tizen build of Nexstar's free ad-supported channel for KOLR 10 (CBS) and KOZL (MyNetworkTV) in Springfield, Missouri. The app delivers a 24/7 livestream of the Ozarks First newscast, on-demand replays of recent broadcasts, original local series, and weather and sports clip reels for the Springfield-Branson DMA.
Sign-in uses Nexstar's "My Nexstar" account system — the same login the company's other Tizen FAST channels share, which lets you carry preferences across markets. The home rail is the live feed; secondary rails surface the most recent newscast replay, weather coverage, high-school sports, and a small library of original digital-only series.
Playback is HLS at standard HD. There is no 4K feed, no HDR, and no DVR — the livestream is live, with no pause, rewind, or restart. VOD clips behave normally with directional-pad seek. The app is free, ad-supported with pre-roll and mid-roll inventory sold by Nexstar.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The basic job works. The livestream comes up in three or four seconds from a cold launch, the picture is clean HD, and the EPG-style "what's airing now" callout is accurate. For a Springfield-area Samsung TV owner who wants the 6 p.m. newscast on the big screen without switching to the antenna input, OzarksFirst+ is a faster path than the cable box.
Nexstar's nationwide FAST app architecture is a quiet asset here. The Tizen build matches the Roku and Fire TV versions feature-for-feature — same rails, same login, same VOD library — so a household that already uses a Nexstar local app on another device sees no regression on Samsung. That consistency is more than most regional broadcaster apps manage.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The app does nothing for viewers outside the Ozarks. There is no national news fallback, no neighbouring-market option, no way to switch to a different Nexstar station — if you don't live in the Springfield-Branson DMA, the entire content library is irrelevant. That is a defensible product choice, but it caps the audience to roughly the 450,000 households in the market.
Ad density on the free livestream is heavy by 2026 standards — the same 2-3 minute pod structure as broadcast TV, plus pre-roll on every VOD clip. There is no premium tier to remove ads. The lack of a restart-from-beginning button on the live feed is a real omission for a news app — if you join the 6 p.m. newscast at 6:15, you cannot rewind to the top.
CONCLUSION
Install OzarksFirst+ if you live in Springfield, Branson, or anywhere else KOLR 10's signal matters to your week. The app is competent, free, and the most direct way to get the local newscast onto a Samsung TV without an antenna or a cable box. Everyone else can pass — there is nothing here for viewers outside the DMA, and Nexstar offers parallel apps for every other market it operates in. Watch for a restart-from-top button on the livestream; it's the missing feature most news viewers will notice first.