At CES 2026, Roku founder, chairman, and CEO Anthony Wood shared insight into the future of the company’s newest streaming channel, Howdy, and its plans to compete more broadly in the streaming market. The $2.99-per-month service, which launched last August, offers ad-free access to library content at a time when many competing streaming platforms continue to raise prices.
“The opportunity for Howdy was — if you just look at what’s going on in the streaming world with streaming services, they’re getting more expensive. They keep raising prices, and they keep adding larger and larger ad loads,” Wood explained at the Variety Entertainment Summit at CES. “And so, the part of the market where it actually started — low-cost and no ads — is gone now. There’s no streaming services that address that portion of the market.”
Wood also indicated that Roku plans to make Howdy available to more users beyond its own platform. While the service initially launched exclusively on Roku devices, he said the company “will take it off-platform as well,” signaling a broader distribution strategy.
When asked offstage whether that expansion would include mobile apps, the web, or other platforms, Wood told TechCrunch that Roku has not yet confirmed where Howdy will appear. However, he added that “we want to distribute it everywhere.” This suggests that Howdy could eventually become an app available across a wide range of devices, both large and small.
Wood declined to share subscriber numbers with TechCrunch, but said onstage, “I think if I just look at the market, it’s going to be a big streaming service.”