Roku is launching an ad-free subscription streaming service called Howdy. The service costs $2.99 per month and features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from its partners, including Lionsgate, Warner Bros. Discovery, and FilmRise, alongside select Roku Original titles.
The company says subscribers will be able to watch titles like “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Blind Side,” “Weeds,” and “Kids in the Hall,” as well as rom-coms, medical dramas, ’90s comedies, and the like.
“Howdy is ad-free and designed to complement, not compete with, premium services,” said Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood in a press release.
The move comes two months after Roku paid $185 million to acquire Frndly TV, a streaming service that offers live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based DVR.
Howdy joins the company’s Roku Channel, its free, ad-supported (FAST) streaming service. A recent report found that The Roku Channel is the most popular FAST service, ahead of competitors Tubi and Pluto TV. More than 125 million people use the platform every day, Roku says.
A key growth driver for Howdy will be Roku’s organic reach — the company said earlier this year that it had surpassed 90 million streaming households.
Roku last week reported its second-quarter financials, turning in better-than-expected revenue growth of 15%, as streaming hours on the platform came in at 35.4 billion, up 5.2 billion hours from a year earlier.
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