Samsung TV / information / WSYR+
REVIEW
WSYR+ brings Syracuse's NewsChannel 9 to the Samsung TV input list.
Nexstar's Tizen build for the central New York ABC affiliate delivers the 6 and 11 o'clock newscasts, weather, and a thin lineup of replay segments to a free 24/7 channel on the home screen.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
WSYR+ is the kind of app whose existence is the news. A Syracuse viewer who has spent three decades watching NewsChannel 9 on broadcast, then on cable, can now press the Tizen home button on a Samsung set and find the same anchors on a home-row tile next to Netflix and Disney+. That is a quietly significant shift in how local journalism reaches a cord-cut audience, and it costs the viewer nothing.
The app itself is plain. Nexstar has built a template — a 24/7 FAST channel, a clip tab, a Storm Team tab, ad breaks between everything — and rolled it out across its 200-plus owned stations through 2025 and into 2026. WSYR+ is the central New York instance. The design choices are Nexstar’s, not WSYR’s, and they prioritise ad-inventory delivery over discovery or polish. The newscasts are the product. Everything else is shelf-fill.
What WSYR+ delivers, against the modest bar a free local-news app should clear, is the live signal and a working Storm Team feed. For a Samsung TV owner inside the central New York DMA who already trusted the NewsChannel 9 anchor desk, that is exactly enough.
WSYR+ is a local newsroom's signal piped onto a smart-TV home row. The novelty is that it works at all.
FEATURES
WSYR+ is the Tizen app for WSYR-TV NewsChannel 9, the Nexstar-owned ABC affiliate serving Syracuse and the central New York DMA. It launched on Samsung's TV store at the end of March 2026 as part of Nexstar's rolling rollout of market-branded "+" apps to smart-TV platforms — companion to WSYR's broadcast signal, not a replacement for it.
The app's centre of gravity is a single 24/7 FAST channel. It carries the morning, evening, and late newscasts on a loop, with weather updates, Storm Team forecasts, traffic, and replays of recent feature segments filling the gaps. A second tab lists on-demand clips organised by topic (Local, Weather, Sports, Investigations, Bridge Street lifestyle segments). A third tab surfaces longer-form Storm Team radar and forecast videos.
No login. No subscription. No registration wall. The app is ad-supported, with pre-roll and mid-roll inventory served between segments — typical of Nexstar's Tizen template across its sibling apps (WPIX+ in New York, KTLA+ in Los Angeles, the WGN America-adjacent Chicago build).
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
The release-to-launch path is short. A Syracuse viewer who has cut cable, kept the Samsung set, and still wants the 6 o'clock news from the station they grew up with now has a button on the home screen that does exactly that. The 24/7 stream loads quickly on a 2023-or-newer Tizen panel, and the live newscast simulcast is the real product — clipped on-demand segments are the bonus.
Storm Team coverage is the second genuine strength. Central New York gets serious winter weather, and watching a full Storm Team radar segment on the TV — instead of squinting at a phone — is a use case the app supports without friction. The forecast clips are dated, the radar loops are recent, and during a severe event the live stream cuts in.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The catalogue is thin outside the live loop. Nexstar's template across its "+" apps leans heavily on broadcast pass-through; original Tizen-first content is essentially zero. Once you've watched the current newscast, the on-demand library is a handful of segments shorter than what's on the station's website, and there's no DVR-style scrubbing within the live channel.
Ad load is heavy for the inventory delivered. Mid-roll cuts inside replay segments can land mid-sentence, the pre-roll on a clip you've already half-watched on a phone can be a second 15-second spot rather than a frequency-capped one, and there's no upsell to an ad-light tier the way Pluto and Tubi handle the same FAST-channel problem. None of this is unique to WSYR+ — it's the Nexstar template — but it's the headline caveat.
Search is nominal. Discovery beyond the three tabs is essentially absent.
CONCLUSION
Install it if you live in the Syracuse, Utica, Watertown, or Binghamton corner of the WSYR signal area and you cut the cord. The app does what it claims: the NewsChannel 9 broadcast lands on a Tizen home screen for free. Expectations should match — this is a local newsroom's video pipe, not a streaming product. Out-of-market viewers and anyone outside central New York can skip without thinking twice.