Samsung TV / information / WDTN+
REVIEW
WDTN+ brings Dayton's NBC affiliate to the living-room TV.
Nexstar's local-news streaming app for Samsung Tizen delivers WDTN Channel 2 newscasts, weather updates, and 24/7 streams to the Miami Valley audience with the kind of competent, no-surprises build that defines the broadcaster's TV-app fleet.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
WDTN+ is the Samsung TV app for Channel 2 in Dayton, Ohio — the NBC affiliate that has carried Today, Nightly News, and the Miami Valley’s late-night local newscast since 1949. Like every Nexstar Media Group affiliate, WDTN now lives on the smart-TV home screen as a free, ad-supported streaming app that does, on Tizen, what a roof antenna used to do for previous generations of Dayton households.
The Tizen build is the standard Nexstar template — the same shell rolled out across roughly 200 station apps in the group’s portfolio. That uniformity is the point. A Dayton household relocating to Wilkes-Barre or Little Rock can install the equivalent local affiliate app and find the same navigation, the same lane structure, the same on-demand newscast library. WDTN+ is not trying to be a media product; it is trying to be local TV news, delivered to a TV, without a cable subscription.
It succeeds at that, with the caveats local-broadcast streaming has accumulated over the last few years. The on-demand ad load is heavy, the search is minimal, and the lifestyle content stays buried beneath the news rails. But the 24/7 stream is reliable, the weather radar covers the Miami Valley properly, and breaking-news cut-ins surface where they need to. For a Dayton cord-cutter, this is the app that does the job no national streaming service is willing to.
WDTN+ on Tizen is what local-news cord-cutting actually looks like in 2026 — a free, ad-supported stream of a 70-year-old TV station, delivered competently to a smart TV.
FEATURES
WDTN+ is the Samsung TV companion to WDTN, Dayton's NBC affiliate (Channel 2) owned by Nexstar Media Group. The Tizen app streams the station's local newscasts on demand — typically the 5pm, 6pm, and 11pm bulletins, plus the morning Living Dayton lifestyle show — alongside a 24/7 live news channel that runs WDTN Now during off-hours of the broadcast schedule.
The home screen surfaces three lanes: the live stream, the most recent newscast playback, and a topic-organised on-demand library (Local News, Weather, Sports, Investigations, Living Dayton). Weather radar pulls from the WDTN Storm Team 2 feed with Miami Valley coverage out to Cincinnati and Columbus. Breaking-news alerts surface as banner overlays on the Tizen home screen when the app is installed and the broadcast cuts to a special report.
Build is the standard Nexstar local-affiliate template — the same shell that runs WBRE+ in Wilkes-Barre, KARK+ in Little Rock, WGN-TV+ in Chicago, and the rest of the group's roughly 200 station apps. Ad-supported and free; no account creation, no paywall, no sign-in.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Cord-cutting Dayton households finally have a way to watch Channel 2 newscasts without an antenna or a cable subscription, and the WDTN+ Tizen app delivers that core job competently. The 24/7 stream is reliable, on-demand playback resumes correctly, and the weather radar is the kind of hyperlocal feature that travel and YouTube-news apps can't match.
Nexstar's template build is a real strength when judged against what alternative free local-news options exist on Tizen — which is essentially nothing. The Pluto TV local-news channels are nationalised re-feeds; the Samsung TV Plus news lineup is mostly CBSN, Bloomberg, and similar. WDTN+ is the actual Dayton newscast, recorded off the actual Channel 2 broadcast, available within minutes of air.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The Nexstar template is a workhorse, not a showpiece. Search across the on-demand library is minimal, weather radar gestures feel laggy compared to the standalone Storm Team 2 weather app, and the Living Dayton lifestyle content gets buried beneath the news rails despite being some of the station's better TV-friendly material. There is no Chromecast-from-phone equivalent for the Tizen build, no household-profile support, and no way to set the app as the Tizen default at TV power-on.
Ad density during on-demand playback runs heavier than the linear broadcast. A 4-minute on-demand newscast clip will frequently carry two pre-rolls plus a mid-roll, which is the math local-broadcast streaming has settled on as it tries to recoup the cord-cutting revenue gap. It is not unique to WDTN — it is the same on every Nexstar affiliate app — but it is the friction users notice first.
CONCLUSION
Install WDTN+ if you live in the Miami Valley, watch Channel 2 newscasts, and have cut the cord. The Tizen build does the one job it has to do — deliver Dayton's NBC affiliate to the Samsung TV — and it does it reliably for free. Don't install it expecting national news, ambitious original programming, or anything beyond the local-affiliate template. For everyone outside Dayton-Springfield-Kettering, the equivalent Nexstar affiliate app for your market does the same job equally well.