Samsung TV / information / WTRF+
REVIEW
WTRF+ brings Wheeling's CBS affiliate to the Samsung TV with respectable polish.
Nexstar's Tizen build of WTRF 7News delivers local Ohio Valley newscasts, regional weather, and CBS-network filler on demand — useful inside its DMA, irrelevant outside it.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 11, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
WTRF+ is the kind of local-station app that quietly justifies its place on a small subset of Samsung TVs. WTRF 7News has covered the Wheeling-Steubenville market — a stretch of West Virginia, eastern Ohio, and a sliver of southwestern Pennsylvania — since 1953. Nexstar Media Group acquired the station years ago and rolled it onto the company’s standardised ”+” smart-TV platform, which is why this Tizen app feels like a sibling of every other Nexstar local-news app you might have run into.
The pitch is narrow and honest. Live 7News broadcasts, recent VOD segments, regional weather, and CBS-network filler — all free, no login, no subscription wall. For a household inside the DMA, this is a credible alternative to keeping the TV’s antenna input wired up, and it works on a 2026 Samsung set without the latency that plagued early local-station apps.
The honest caveat is geographic. Outside the Ohio Valley, WTRF+ is irrelevant — there’s no national programming hook to install it for, and the catalogue ends where 7News’s coverage area ends. That’s the correct design for a local-news app; it just means the audience for this review is a specific tri-state corner of Appalachia, and the rest of the country should be reading about their own CBS affiliate’s build instead.
WTRF+ is built for the Wheeling-Steubenville DMA — a small slice of West Virginia and eastern Ohio where it earns a spot on the home row.
FEATURES
WTRF+ is the Samsung TV companion app for WTRF 7News, the CBS affiliate covering Wheeling, West Virginia and the Ohio Valley DMA. Nexstar Media Group operates the station and ships near-identical Tizen, Roku, Fire TV, and LG builds under the "+" branding across its 200-plus local stations.
The app opens to a live stream of the WTRF newscast that's currently on-air or just finished — 7News at Noon, 7News at 5, 7News at 6, 7News at 11 — plus a video-on-demand grid of recent segments organised by show. Categories cover local news, weather, sports, traffic, and the syndicated lifestyle blocks Nexstar runs across its station group.
Regional weather is the second pillar: a current-conditions tile for Wheeling, the 7-day forecast, and on-demand weather segments from the station's meteorologists. Severe-weather coverage gets a dedicated section during active events. The app also surfaces national CBS network filler — Inside Edition clips, Entertainment Tonight, and the occasional CBS Mornings feature — when local content isn't fresh.
No login required. No subscription. Ads run pre-roll before VOD segments and as banner units between content tiles. Closed captioning is available on most newscasts.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
For viewers inside the Wheeling-Steubenville DMA, WTRF+ does what a local-station Tizen app should. The live newscast stream wakes within four or five seconds of launch, the most recent 7News broadcast is one click away on the home grid, and segments stay available for a few days after airing. A Samsung TV in a Wheeling living room genuinely benefits from having it on the Smart Hub home row.
The Nexstar "+" platform standardisation pays off here. The app behaves predictably across every Samsung TV running 2021 or later Tizen — directional-pad navigation feels right, video buffering is competent on adequate broadband, and the layout doesn't reinvent local-news conventions. Whatever a viewer learned from CBS News on a different station's app transfers cleanly.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
The catalogue thins out fast. Beyond the most recent newscast and a handful of weather segments, the VOD library is shallow — older stories rotate off within a week, and there's no full-broadcast archive. Viewers expecting a Hulu-style back-catalogue of local news will be disappointed; this is a recency-skewed feed.
Ad load is heavier than the content warrants. Pre-roll runs 30 to 45 seconds on segments that are themselves only 90 seconds long, and the banner ads between tiles are static and unmemorable. Nexstar's local-ad inventory across the "+" platform has more reach than depth, so the same regional spots cycle frequently.
Geographic relevance is the structural limit. WTRF 7News is a local CBS affiliate covering a specific tri-state corner of Appalachia. Outside the DMA, the app's reason to exist evaporates — there's no compelling reason for a Pittsburgh or Columbus viewer to install this instead of their own local CBS station's "+" app.
CONCLUSION
Install WTRF+ if you live in Wheeling, Steubenville, or anywhere in the Ohio Valley DMA where 7News is your default local station. The Tizen build is competent, the live newscast access is fast, and the price is zero. Outside that footprint, look for your own region's CBS affiliate "+" app — Nexstar ships dozens of near-identical builds, and the one that matters is the one covering your home county.