Looking For Live Wildfire News Coverage? Streaming News Channels Aren't Much Help

I wanted to watch some local LA news coverage of the Southern California wildfire & I know that some of the LA stations have streaming news feeds. So what can I find? I have been told by numerous industry experts that the beauty of FAST networks is that you can watch local news wherever you may be located.

I decide to head over to Pluto. First up is the CBS News Los Angeles feed. Which for some unexplained reason is showing a CBS News 24/7 feed, currently streaming a Face The Nation rerun.

Oh, there's a CNN Headlines channel. And it is streaming a weird clip show collection of what seem to be random CNN news stories. If you want to watch Smerconish doing zoom calls with people about climate change, CNN Headlines has you covered. ABC News Live is currently streaming the news special Lost Lands: Cameron And Gabon. And NBC News Now is streaming old episodes of Dateline NBC.

Live Now At Fox is the first streamer I find that is providing live news coverage, including updates on the Los Angeles Wildfires. The presentation is low-tech and it relies more on assembled news footage than live shots. But there are relatively recent interviews and the news coverage itself is reasonably informative.

I then moved over to Pluto TV rival Tubi, which in a side note, is much more difficult to navigate if you're looking for specific live feeds. Because it's owned by Fox, there is a Fox Los Angeles channel, but it is streaming the Live Now At Fox stream. That is the only live news channel that isn't also available on Pluto TV.

Over at Paramount+, you can stream the CBS News 24/7 feed I mentioned above, as well as the CBS News Los Angeles feed. Which only aired CBS and KCAL promos for the ten minutes I had it on.

I decided to check out the live news channels available on The Roku Channel, which has a user interface so clunky I wouldn't be surprised to discover it had been designed by the fine folks at Amazon.

After some stumbling around, I discovered something new: the stream of ABC 7 Los Angeles. And finally found actual live coverage of the wildfire, with what seems to be a simulcast of the TV station's broadcast feed.

It took me a half hour to find what I was looking for, which is a live broadcast feed of the Wildfire coverage. It shouldn't be this hard and shame on all of the so-called "new streaming options for live TV," which are just streaming random days-old news coverage under the headline of "Live News."

I probably missed some other options, but to be honest, at this point I just wanted to watch some LA News.

But man, what a terrible user experience.