Top 20 Free Internet TV Channels You Can Watch Online Legally

Sally Polly October 17, 2021 | 19:38

To know which TV channels are free for daily broadcasting and watching news, keep reading the article below.

We know about the various streaming services that let you watch live TV. But what about standalone TV channels? Is it possible to watch free internet TV channels from around the world?

Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in clear (unencrypted) form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscription, other ongoing cost, or one-off fee (e.g., pay-per-view). In the traditional sense, this is carried on terrestrial radio signals and received with an antenna.

FTA also refers to channels and broadcasters providing content for which no subscription is expected, even though they may be delivered to the viewer/listener by another carrier for which a subscription is required, e.g., cable television, the Internet, or satellite. These carriers may be mandated (or OPT) in some geographies to deliver FTA channels even if a premium subscription is not present (providing the necessary equipment is still available), especially where FTA channels are expected to be used for emergency broadcasts, similar to the 1-1-2 (112) emergency service provided by mobile phone operators and manufacturers.

On the other side, free-to-view (FTV) is generally available without subscription, but it is digitally encoded and may be restricted geographically.

Free-to-air is often used for international broadcasting, making it something of a video equivalent to shortwave radio. Most FTA retailers list free-to-air channel guides and content available in North America for free-to-air use.

Here are the best internet TV channels to watch online, all of which are both free and legal.

The list of top 20 free internet TV channels you can watch online legally

20. NTV (Russia)

19. CityNews HD (Canada)

18. India News (India)

17. Deutsche Welle Asia Plus (Germany)

16. Rossiya 2 Live (Russia)

15. PBS Kids

14. NFL Channel

13. CBC News

12. Channel 4

11. Fubo Sports Network

10. Nick Jr.

9. ITV Channels

8. CNN

7. France 24

6. Eleven Sports Network

5. FOX Sports

4. ABC

3. Sky News

2. Bloomberg Television

1. BBC Channels

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What are the top free internet TV channels that you can watch legally?

20. NTV (Russia)

GeoCam.ru

NTV (Cyrillic: НТВ) is a Russian free-to-air television channel that was launched as a subsidiary of Vladimir Gusinsky's company Media-Most. Since 14 April 2001 Gazprom Media controls the network. NTV has no official meaning according to Igor Malashenko, the author of the name and co-founder of the company, but in the 1990s unofficial transcripts of the acronym include "New" (Novoye), "Independent" (Nezavisimoye), "Non-governmental" (Negosudarstvenoye), "Our" (Nashe).

Vladimir Gusinsky founded NTV broadcasting in October 1993 on channel 4 moving to channel 5 in January 1994.[2] He attracted talented journalists and news anchors of the time such as Tatiana Mitkova, Leonid Parfyonov, Mikhail Osokin, Yevgeniy Kiselyov, Vladimir A. Kara-Murza, Victor Shenderovich and others. The channel set high professional standards in Russian television, broadcasting live coverage and sharp analysis of current events. Starting before the dissolution of Soviet Union as Fourth Programme, the channel broadcast a daily news programme Segodnya and a weekly news-commentary programme Itogi which was jointly supported by the United States magazine Newsweek. In the early 1990s, Video International, a multibillion-dollar advertising agency, obtained exclusive advertising rights on NTV.

It commented favorably on President Boris Yeltsin's re-election campaign in 1996.

By 1999 NTV had achieved an audience of 102 million, covering about 70% of Russia's territory, and was available in other former Soviet republics.

During parliamentary elections in 1999 and presidential elections in 2000, NTV was critical of the Second Chechen War, Vladimir Putin and the political party Unity backed by him. In the puppet show Puppets in the beginning of February 2000, the puppet of Putin acted as Little Zaches in a story based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's Little Zaches Called Cinnabar, in which blindness causes villagers mistake an evil gnome for a beautiful youth. This provoked a fierce reaction from Putin's supporters. On 8 February the newspaper Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti published a letter signed by the Rector of St. Petersburg State University Lyudmila Verbitskaya, the Dean of its Law Department Nikolay Kropachyov and some of Putin's other presidential campaign assistants that urged the prosecution of the authors of the show for what they considered a criminal offence.

The colorful "NTV" logo as well as the iconic green sphere were designed by Simon Levin, the Russian designer, and became a symbol for the new graphic language of television design in Russia.

19. CityNews HD (Canada)

Photo: 680 News

CityNews (corporately styled CityNews) is the title of news and current affairs programming on Rogers Sports & Media's Citytv network in Canada. It is a standalone local newscast on the network's Toronto, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Montreal and Vancouver stations, while on the remaining Citytv stations it airs as the news headlines segment during each station's Breakfast Television morning show.

Before the 2017–2018 relaunch of CityNews nationally, Citytv stations outside Toronto had their midday and evening news programs cancelled in 2006, and the remaining news programming on these stations (such as the nationally-broadcast CityNews International) was cancelled in early 2010.

On February 14, 2007, CityNews created the CityNews Webcast, a downloadable news podcast based in Toronto. There are three Webcasts uploaded on weekdays: in the morning, presented by Kevin Frankish from Breakfast Television; in the afternoon, presented by CityNews at Six anchor Gord Martineau; and the final Webcast in the evening, presented by the anchor hosting CityNews Tonight.

The CityPulse newscast originally began with the instrumental version of "Masterpiece" by The Temptations. In 1979, it was changed to a rendition of "Gonna Fly Now" by Maynard Ferguson; the theme was remixed and rearranged well into the 2000s. The theme for CityPulse Tonight continued to be "Masterpiece" until the early 1980s. From 1985 until 1994, "Pentatus" by Graham Shaw was used as the theme music for CityPulse Tonight. The current theme is a custom-composed music piece.

18. India News (India)

Country: India

Description: India News is a Hindi language Indian TV news channel. The Channel is run by Kartikeya Sharma. The Indian company ITV Media Group runs the channel.The network broadcasts 24-hour a day, all throughout the year. With its strong content and wide network of proficient reporters and stringers, the channel stands firm on the foundations of its motto, 'Sach Jo Aap Jaanana Chahte Hain', 'the truth you want to know'.

17. Deutsche Welle Asia Plus (Germany)

Deutsche Welle or DW is a German public state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 30 languages. DW's satellite television service consists of channels in English, German, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish, Bengali, and Arabic. The work of DW is regulated by the Deutsche Welle Act, meaning that content is intended to be independent of government influence. DW is a member of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU).

DW offers regularly updated articles on its news website and runs its own center for international media development, DW Akademie. The broadcaster's stated goals are to produce reliable news coverage, provide access to the German language, and promote understanding between peoples.

DW has been broadcasting since 1953. It is headquartered in Bonn, where its radio programmes are produced. However, television broadcasts are produced almost entirely in Berlin. Both locations create content for DW's news website.

It is also a provider of live streaming world news which can be viewed via its website, YouTube, and various mobile devices and digital media players.

As of 2019, around 1,500 employees and 1,500 freelancers from 60 countries work for Deutsche Welle in its offices in Bonn and Berlin.

16. Rossiya 2 Live (Russia)

Russia-2 (Russian: Россия-2) was a Russian television channel operated by VGTRK. It primarily broadcast sport.

Between 2007 and 2009 during the daytime, it broadcast the children's channel called Bibigon.

Before January 1, 2010, it was known as Sport, but since then it was re-branded due to a broadened format.

On 1 November 2015 the channel was closed and its broadcasting frequency was taken by a new sports television channel Match TV.

15. PBS Kids

APKPure.com

PBS Kids is the brand for most of the children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Some public television children's programs are not produced by PBS member stations or transmitted by PBS which is produced by independent public television distributors such as American Public Television are not labeled as "PBS Kids" programming, and it is mainly a programming block branding.

PBS Kids is also the name of a separate network which has had two iterations in the age of digital television; one which existed between 1999 and 2005, and the current version which was launched in January 2017. The network is also available in sub-Saharan Africa and Australia.

On September 6, 1999, PBS launched the PBS Kids brand in several areas including its daytime Ready to Learn Service, PBS Online web pages for kids, and a home video label. Children's programming on the PBS network was then given unified branding. Along with the block of programming on PBS, PBS Kids lent its name to a separate television network, which launched on the same date and was targeted to children from 3 to 8 years old. The PBS Kids Channel ran for six years.

On September 30, 2000, the Bookworm Bunch programming block was introduced as PBS Kids' Saturday morning block. PBS Kids Go!, a programming block targeting older children, was launched in October 2004.

The network was shut down on September 26, 2005, in favor of a new commercial cable and satellite joint venture channel, PBS Kids Sprout, which was developed in partnership with Sesame Workshop, HIT Entertainment and Comcast (who later bought full control of the network via NBCUniversal).

14. NFL Channel

NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and NFL RedZone. Dedicated to American football, the network features game telecasts from the NFL, as well as NFL-related content including analysis programs, specials and documentaries. The network is headquartered in the NFL Los Angeles building located next to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and broadcasts its worldwide feed from Encompass Digital Media (formally Crawford Communications) in Atlanta, Georgia. The network has secondary East Coast facilities in the NFL Films building in Mount Laurel, New Jersey.

As of February 2015, NFL Network is available to approximately 71,867,000 pay television households in the United States (totaling 61.7% of U.S. households with at least one television set).

13. CBC News

CBC News is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca. Founded in 1941, CBC News is the largest news broadcaster in Canada and has local, regional, and national broadcasts and stations. It frequently collaborates with its French-language counterpart, Radio-Canada Info, though the two are organizationally separate. The CBC follows the Journalistic Standards and Practices which provides the policy framework within which CBC journalism seeks to meet the expectations and obligations it faces from the public.

CBC began delivering news online in 1996 via the Newsworld Online website. The CBC News Online site launched in 1998. In 2016, the site was renamed CBC Indigenous. In 2017, CBC News relaunched its flagship newscast, The National, with four co-anchors based in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver and later two anchors Monday through Thursday and a single anchor on Friday and Sunday.

12. Channel 4

Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public-service television network. Its headquarters are in London, with a national headquarters in Leeds and creative hubs in Glasgow and Bristol.

The channel was established to provide a fourth television service to the United Kingdom in addition to the licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and the single commercial broadcasting network ITV.

It began transmission on 2 November 1982, the day after Welsh language broadcaster S4C's launch. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. In 2010, Channel 4 extended service into Wales and became a UK-wide television channel.

11. Fubo Sports Network

Photo: Deadline

On June 27, 2019, FuboTV announced it launched a free ad supported linear channel called fubo Sports Network. The network is free to consumers on XUMO. fubo Sports Network later launched on smart TVs like Samsung TV Plus and LG Channels powered by XUMO and on The Roku Channel.

After the initial soft-launch, the company announced on September 9, 2019, that it would be adding a slate of sports-oriented original programming to fubo Sports Network. Including "Call It A Night" and "Drinks With Binks," two talk shows hosted by journalist and comedian Julie Stewart-Binks; "The Cooligans," a soccer talk show hosted by New York comedians Alexis Guerreros and Christian Polanco; and "The Players' Lounge" hosted by Soccer Hall of Fame inductee Cobi Jones and PJ Harrison. The company also made the live stream of fubo Sports Network available at the fubo Sports Network website.

fubo Sports Network was added to the new Vizio Channels platform in April 2020.

The company announced a partnership with former NBA All Star Gilbert Arenas to bring his "No Chill" podcast to fubo Sports Network as a weekly vodcast beginning May 2020. Retitled "No Chill with Gilbert Arenas," the show features Arenas and co-host Mike Botticello interviewing athletes, coaches and celebrities.

As of May 19, 2020, Fubo Sports Network is available on 75 million devices, according to the company.

In May 2021, Fubo Sports Network announced it has partnered with Terrell Owens and Matthew Hatchette to turn their podcast, Getcha Popcorn Ready, into a TV show. The new show will begin airing on Fubo Sports Network later this year.

10. Nick Jr.

Nick Jr. (known on-air as the Nick Jr. Channel) is an American pay television channel spun off from Nickelodeon's long-running preschool programming block of the same name. It is run by ViacomCBS through its domestic networks division's Kids and Family Group. The channel launched on September 28, 2009, and primarily targets preschoolers. Its lineup features a mix of originally-produced programming, along with series from the Nickelodeon weekday block; because of the two entities, Nick Jr. is known on-air as "the Nick Jr. Channel" (as of March 2018) to avoid confusion, especially at times of day where both services are carrying preschool programming.

The channel replaced Noggin, which was relaunched as a streaming service in 2015 and acts as a separate sister brand. Noggin's programming is distinct from the Nick Jr. channel's, it mainly carried pre-teen-oriented programs at its launch, and its 2015 streaming service features a variety of exclusive series.

The Nick Jr. channel and the Nick Jr. block are both currently running. The latter airs weekdays on Nickelodeon from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. ET (those hours vary during the summer months, other school break periods and on major national holidays), having traditional commercial breaks for certain programs. As of September 2018, Nick Jr. is available to approximately 70.310 million pay television households in the United States.

9. ITV Channels

ITV (previously branded ITV1 from 2001 to 2013) is a British free-to-air television channel owned and operated by ITV plc. It provides the Channel 3 service across the country except in the central and northern areas of Scotland where STV provides the service.

ITV as a consistent national channel (with, importantly, dedicated slots for regional news and other regional programmes) evolved out of the old ITV network - a federation of separately owned regional companies which had significantly different local schedules and branding.

Arguably the single biggest move in the creation of ITV in its present form came in 2004 when Granada Television acquired Carlton Communications to form ITV plc. The two companies had gradually acquired all the other regional Channel 3 companies in England and Wales. ITV plc later acquired Channel Television in the Channel Islands and UTV in Northern Ireland.

Around the same time as this, the differences between the schedules in each region gradually reduced - partly through the consolidation of ownership and partly through the standardisation in the volume and scheduling of regional programmes.

Branding was also standardised. From 2002, the names of regional stations in England were only mentioned before regional programmes. Effectively this left ITV1 in England looking like a national channel with slots for regional programmes - like BBC One - rather than a group of independent regional broadcasters sharing programmes.

8. CNN

The Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news-based pay television channel headquartered in Atlanta, United States. It is owned by CNN Worldwide, a unit of the WarnerMedia News & Sports division of AT&T's WarnerMedia. It was founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel. Upon its launch in 1980, CNN was the first television channel to provide 24-hour news coverage, and was the first all-news television channel in the United States.

As of September 2018, CNN has 90.1 million television households as subscribers (97.7% of households with cable) in the United States. According to Nielsen, in June 2021 CNN ranked third in viewership among cable news networks, behind Fox News and MSNBC, averaging 580,000 viewers throughout the day, down 49% from a year earlier, amid sharp declines in viewers across all cable news networks. CNN ranks 14th among all basic cable networks.

The network is known for its dramatic live coverage of breaking news, some of which has drawn criticism as overly sensationalistic, and for its efforts to be nonpartisan, which have led to accusations of false balance.

Globally, CNN programming has aired through CNN International, seen by viewers in over 212 countries and territories; since May 2019 however, the US domestic version has absorbed international news coverage in order to streamline programming expenses. The American version, sometimes referred to as CNN (US), is also available in Canada, some islands of the Caribbean and in Japan, where it was first broadcast on CNNj in 2003, with simultaneous translation in Japanese.

7. France 24

France 24 (France vingt-quatre in French and Arabic channels, France veinticuatro in Spanish channel) is a French state-owned international news television network based in Paris. Its channels broadcast in French, English, Arabic, and Spanish and are aimed at the overseas market.

Based in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux, the service started on 6 December 2006. It is aimed at a worldwide market and is generally broadcast by pay television providers around the world, but additionally, in 2010, France 24 began broadcasting online through its own iPhone and Android apps. It is a provider of live streaming world news which can be viewed via its website, YouTube, and various mobile devices and digital media players. The stated mission of the channels is to "provide a global public service and a common editorial stance".

Since 2008 the channel has been wholly owned by the French government, via its holding company France Médias Monde, having bought out the minority share of the former partners: Groupe TF1 and France Télévisions. The budget is approximately €100 million per year. The current director of France 24 is Vanessa Burggraf.

6. Eleven Sports Network

Eleven Sports is a multinational sports and entertainment media group. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, it is owned by Andrea Radrizzani's sports and media investment platform Aser Ventures.

Eleven Sports' business model initially centred around the acquisition of major international sports rights in smaller countries. The company operates a network of linear television and/or digital services, broadcasting a mix of premium, niche-premium, longtail and grassroots sports as well as original programming, and provides SaaS livestreaming services. The US based global media company Team Whistle is also part of the Eleven group.

5. FOX Sports

Photo: FOX sports

Fox Sports, also referred to as Fox Sports Media Group and stylized in all caps as FOX Sports, is the sports programming division of the Fox Corporation that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by the Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports 1 (FS1), Fox Sports 2 (FS2), and the Fox Sports Radio network.

The division was formed in 1994 with Fox's acquisition of broadcast rights to National Football League (NFL) games. In subsequent years, Fox has televised the National Hockey League (NHL) (1994–1999), Major League Baseball (1996–present), NASCAR (2001–present), the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) (2007–2010), Major League Soccer (MLS) (2003–2011, 2015–present), the U.S. Open golf tournament (2015–2019), the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) (2016–present), and WWE programming (2019–present).

On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to acquire then-parent company 21st Century Fox for $52.4 billion, which included key assets such as the regional Fox Sports Networks (which were later sold by Disney to the Sinclair Broadcast Group), FX Networks Group (which had previously aired sports-related programming), and Fox Sports International. Under the terms of the proposed acquisition, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, and other assets were spun off into the division's current parent company, which is independently owned by 21st Century Fox's current shareholders.

4. ABC

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American multinational commercial broadcast television network that is the flagship property of Walt Disney Television, a division of Disney General Entertainment Content of The Walt Disney Company. The network is headquartered in Burbank, California, on Riverside Drive, directly across the street from Walt Disney Studios and adjacent to the Roy E. Disney Animation Building. The network's secondary offices, and headquarters of its news division, are in New York City, at its broadcast center at 77 West 66th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

ABC broadcasts international versions in many countries. However, if you want to watch the US edition of the network for free online, you can do so via the USTVNow service.

ABC is just one of five TV channels you can watch for free on the service. The other four are CBS, PBS, MyTV 9, and CW. All of the channels are only available in standard definition.

The channel is only officially available to American citizens living abroad, but there are several workarounds you can use to gain access.

3. Sky News

Photo: Youtube

Sky News is a British free-to-air television news channel and organisation. Sky News is distributed via a radio news service, and through online channels. It is owned by Sky Group, a division of Comcast. John Ryley is the head of Sky News, a role he has held since June 2006. In 2019, Sky News was named Royal Television Society News Channel of the Year, the 12th time it has held the award. It is a provider of live streaming world news which can be viewed via its website, YouTube, and various mobile devices and digital media players.

A sister channel, Sky News Arabia, is operated as a joint venture with the Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corporation. Another sister channel, Sky News Australia, was part-owned by Sky News parent Sky plc until December 2016. A channel called Sky News International, simulcasting the UK channel directly but without British advertisements, is available in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Asia Pacific, Australia, and the Americas. Narrated segments (which generally cover lighter issues unrelated to current news stories) are played in lieu of advertisements, and international weather forecasts also are given at the end of each half-hour newswheel. Sponsored advertisements are still broadcast before and/or after the sports news and weather segments. Sky News Radio provides national and international news to commercial radio and community radio stations in the UK and other English-language stations around the world. Sky News also provides content to Yahoo! News. The channel is available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, YouTube, and Pluto TV.

2. Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Television (on-air as Bloomberg) is an American-based pay television network centered towards business and capital market programming, owned by Bloomberg L.P. It is distributed globally, reaching over 310 million homes worldwide. It is headquartered in New York City, with European headquarters in London and Asian headquarters in Hong Kong.

Bloomberg is an associate member of the Caribbean Cable & Telecommunications Association and the Caribbean Cable Cooperative.

In November 2011, Bloomberg announced the formation of "Bloomberg TV Mongolia" in partnership with Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia (TDB), the oldest and one of the largest commercial banks in Mongolia. The channel offers a mix of locally produced, Mongolian language content as well as English language news from Bloomberg Television.

In February 2015, Bloomberg partnered with Canadian media company Channel Zero to form Bloomberg TV Canada, which featured U.S. Bloomberg Television programming and Canadian-produced studio programs produced from Bloomberg's Brookfield Place studio and other Canadian bureaus. The channel replaced the U.S. service on Canadian television providers. The channel shut down in October 2017, after which Bloomberg entered into a partnership with Bell Media's Business News Network (BNN), to co-brand the channel as BNN Bloomberg, and grant the company rights to distribute its television and radio content in Canada. The co-branded service will augment BNN's existing business day programming with additional Bloomberg programs to handle coverage of international markets, and access to its bureaus.

1. BBC Channels

Photo: Apple Store

BBC Online, formerly known as BBCi, is the BBC's online service. It is a large network of websites including such high-profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the children's sites CBBC and CBeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize. The BBC has had an online presence supporting its TV and radio programmes and web-only initiatives since April 1994, but did not launch officially until 28 April 1997, following government approval to fund it by TV licence fee revenue as a service in its own right. Throughout its history, the online plans of the BBC have been subject to competition and complaint from its commercial rivals, which has resulted in various public consultations and government reviews to investigate their claims that its large presence and public funding distorts the UK market.

The website has gone through several branding changes since it was launched. Originally named BBC Online, it was rebranded as BBCi (which itself was the brand name for interactive TV services) before being named bbc.co.uk. It was then renamed BBC Online again in 2008, although the service uses the branding "BBC".

On 26 February 2010 The Times claimed that Mark Thompson, then Director General of the BBC, proposed that the BBC's web output should be cut by 50%, with online staff numbers and budgets reduced by 25% in a bid to scale back BBC operations and allow commercial rivals more room. On 2 March 2010, the BBC reported that it would cut its website spending by 25% and close BBC 6 Music and Asian Network. On 24 January 2011, the confirmed cuts of 25% were announced, leaving a £34 million shortfall. This resulted in the closure of several sites, including BBC Switch, BBC Blast, 6-0-6, and the announcement of plans to sell the Douglas Adams created site h2g.

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