Samsung TV / information / WFRV+
REVIEW
WFRV+ brings the Green Bay CBS affiliate to Samsung TVs with workmanlike polish.
Nexstar's free local-news streamer for WFRV Channel 5 covers Northeast Wisconsin with 24/7 newscasts, weather, and Storm Team coverage. The Tizen build is exactly what a small-market affiliate app should be — and not a frame more.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
WFRV+ is the kind of app the streaming-TV era was supposed to produce more of, and somehow hasn’t: a free, no-login channel from a local broadcaster who wants you to keep watching the local newscast after you cancelled cable. Nexstar Media Group operates the station — Channel 5 has been the Green Bay CBS affiliate since 1955 — and has built a near-uniform app template across its ~200 owned-and-operated affiliates. The Tizen build for WFRV is that template, applied capably to a small Wisconsin market.
The product question for a station app is narrow: does it deliver the live newscast and the weather radar reliably? On both counts, WFRV+ does. The 24/7 live feed mirrors what’s on the broadcast, the Storm Team 5 section surfaces the seven-day forecast and live radar as their own rail, and the on-demand library carries the four daily newscasts plus longer community features. None of it is surprising, and on a small-market affiliate app, surprise is not what you want.
What you want, instead, is a Samsung remote shortcut to the newscast your neighbours watch. WFRV+ delivers that — a free channel for a free affiliate, no account, modest ad load, picture quality that matches the broadcast. For Northeast Wisconsin households on a Samsung TV, the install is automatic. For anyone outside the viewing area, there’s nothing here to travel for.
WFRV+ is a hyper-local utility — a free channel for a free affiliate, delivered without ceremony to a Samsung remote.
FEATURES
WFRV+ is the Samsung TV companion to WFRV-TV Channel 5, the Nexstar-owned CBS affiliate covering Green Bay, Appleton, and Northeast Wisconsin. The Tizen app streams the station's 24/7 local-news channel — Local 5 News at noon, 5pm, 6pm, and 10pm — plus on-demand replays of recent newscasts, Storm Team 5 weather segments, and the longer-form community features the station produces during the week.
The home rail leads with the live linear feed: whatever Channel 5 is broadcasting right now, with the standard pause-and-rewind controls Samsung's Tizen video stack provides. Below the live tile, rails sort by news, weather, sports (Packers coverage during the season carries an outsized share of the catalogue), and community features. A separate Storm Team 5 section surfaces radar, the seven-day forecast, and the most recent weather updates as standalone clips.
Nexstar's NewsNet national newsfeed sits as a secondary tile on the home shelf, the same shared national content the parent company surfaces across its ~200 affiliate apps. No account or login is required. The app is free, ad-supported, and the ad load is modest by free-streaming-app standards — typically one 30-second spot at the top of each on-demand segment plus mid-roll on longer pieces.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
For households in the WFRV viewing area who've cut the cord, this app is the path back to the local newscast — and the local newscast is what cord-cutters miss most. The live feed launches in under three seconds on a 2023+ Samsung QLED, the picture quality matches what an HD broadcast looks like over the air, and the rewind buffer means you can catch the weather segment you missed by walking into the kitchen.
The Storm Team 5 section is the genuinely useful piece. Northeast Wisconsin winters mean the seven-day forecast and live radar are something locals actually open the app for, and surfacing them as a separate rail rather than burying them inside a generic newscast is the right product call.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
Search is rudimentary — you can filter by anchor name and a handful of topic tags, but there's no full-text search across recent segments and no way to subscribe to a recurring topic the way the YouTube-style affiliate apps now offer. The recommendation rail at the bottom of each clip is generic Nexstar national content rather than related local segments, which feels like a missed opportunity.
Picture quality on the live feed caps at 720p — fine for newscasts, but lower than the 1080p the Tizen panel can clearly handle. No 4K, no HDR, no closed captioning customisation beyond the system-level Tizen accessibility settings. The app launches cold every time; there's no resume-where-you-left-off across sessions.
CONCLUSION
WFRV+ is a hyper-local utility. If you live in Brown, Outagamie, Calumet, or Winnebago county and you've replaced cable with a Samsung TV, install it — the live Channel 5 feed and Storm Team 5 radar justify the install on their own. If you don't live in the WFRV viewing area, there's no reason to open it. Nexstar runs comparable apps for nearly 200 other affiliates, so check your market for the equivalent build before assuming this one travels.