People who pay for a subscription to livestream The Weather Channel via its dedicated smart TV app are seeing a 66.7 percent price hike.
The TV app, available via Android TV, Fire TV, Roku, and Samsung TVs, used to cost $3 per month, or $30 per year. According to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, those prices were valid as recently as April 2026. Now, a subscription to the streaming app is $5 per month, or $50 per year, as first reported today by Cord Cutters News.
In addition to livestreaming The Weather Channel’s broadcast network, The Weather Channel TV app also offers on-demand shows, local forecasts, maps, radars, and news. The app launched in May 2022, allowing people to access The Weather Channel’s reporting without a cable or satellite TV subscription.
Interestingly, the new $5 per month price matches what Allen Media Group, which bought The Weather Channel in 2018, wanted to charge for The Weather Channel Plus, which a 2021 press release described as a subscription service that would have over “50 news and entertainment streaming channels for a launch in the fourth quarter of 2021” and that its owner expected to reach “30 million subscribers in its first five years.” The Weather Channel Plus never actually became available. Instead, The Weather Channel is only getting its streaming subscription revenue from the original app, which does not include dozens of streaming channels.
The change in plans and subsequent price hike of The Weather Channel’s TV app shows how fickle the streaming industry can be, especially when it comes to legacy media companies’ roles. Many organizations that succeeded in the broadcast era are struggling to find the right value proposition, including prices, for the streaming era, while ensuring they have a place at the table. Even successful streaming TV providers are struggling to manage the infrastructure, app development, licensing costs, user support, and other expenses associated with running an attractively priced, always-on streaming service that can maintain profitability.
The Weather Channel faces an uphill battle as people have more options for weather reporting than they did during the network’s prime. Besides local news stations, the channel is competing with websites and free and paid-for mobile apps—including, respectively, Weather.com and The Weather Channel iOS and Android apps, which are all owned by a separate company, private equity firm Francisco Partners—and personal smart home devices. While likely facing declining advertising dollars for its broadcast channel, The Weather Channel is challenged to pay for the technology, tools, and staff needed to provide accurate, real-time weather reports, news, analysis, and additional programming on the channel and TV app.
Accessing any of The Weather Channel’s rivals could be viewed, depending on the user, as more convenient than opening a dedicated app that they downloaded onto their smart TV. With a 67 percent price hike also now in tow, The Weather Channel’s niche TV app subscription may be perceived as even less convenient than before.
