Cable is expensive and an entire generation does not know that over the air TV (NBC, CBS, PBS, FOX etc.) is free with a cheap antenna. People think it’s an illegal hack despite this being how people have gotten TV for generations. Additionally, a lot of people live in areas and homes served by these stations but do not receive a good signal due to environmental obstruction such as trees or hills. US law has a provision for this to allow non profits to retransmit the signal to resolve this issue. There was an attempt by Locast to do this recently but it was shut down not due to the retransmission, which everyone agrees was legal, but the way they monetized and used their money.
LocalTV+ is an attempt to provide unmodified TV signals for certain markets in the US over the internet. It should not be necessary for people to buy expensive plans on streaming providers or go to pirate websites to watch signals that are free. Viewing a show on a phone should be as straight forward as watching something on Netflix. You also should not need to hunt down which balkanized streaming service a popular show or sport is airing on.
LocalTV+ is currently in private beta for iOS for just the Boston market. There will be a TvOS version soon. Watch this site for updates.