11 Jun Frndly TV Adds Allen Media Group’s Recipe.TV and Local Now

By Jon Lafayette

Distribution agreement extends carriage of The Weather Channel

Frndly TV is adding Allen Media Group’s Recipe.TV channel and Local Now streaming service to its family-oriented, low-priced over-the-top television service as part of an agreement to extend its relationship with Allen Media Group’s Weather Channel.

The deal means that at the end of June, Frndly TV will offer viewers 18 linear channels. Frndly TV said that it will be able to keep in place its current price structure, which starts at $5.99 a month.

Allen Media Group is headed by founder and CEO Byron Allen, who has been buying up TV stations and pushing marketers to spend more of their ad dollars with minority owned media outlets.

“In addition to extending our carriage arrangement for The Weather Channel, we’re thrilled to make two more of our flagship content platforms — Recipe.TV, and our streaming service Local Now — available to Frndly TV subscribers,” said Allen. “Our multiple Emmy-nominated network Recipe.TV and our streaming service Local Now offer compelling and vibrant lifestyle content with an unmatched combination of customized local news and information, weather, traffic, and sports.”

Recipe.TV programming includes Paris Bistro Cooking with Edward Delling-Williams, who was recently nominated for an Emmy award as outstanding culinary host.

Frndly has been bucking the trend among over-the-top TV services and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) by keeping its price low, adding subscribers while maintaining profitability.

“We are very pleased to add two great channels in Recipe.TV and Local Now to our lineup,” said Michael McKenna, chief programmer officer of Frndly TV. “Recipe.TV perfectly fills a programming genre that our customers were asking us for. And Local Now – with its hyper-local focus on more than 225 cities across the U.S. – gives us a quality news and information offering. Both are very welcome, family friendly additions to our Frndly TV lineup.”