Sling TV just announced it has added local live broadcasts from Univision and UniMás to its Spanish-language OTT streaming service, Sling Latino. It's a first for the company and a sign of how it might evolve next.

Sling Latino, launched in the summer, offers base packages of Spanish-language news, entertainment, and sports channels similar to Sling TV's core contract-free "Best of Live TV" streaming bundle, but at even lower prices. At $12 per month, Sling Latino's main bundle, "Pacquete Total," includes several channels from Univision's network, including the flagship network, UniMás, and Univision Deportes.

Univision Goes Local on Sling Latino

This week, Sling Latino got a big update, launching local live broadcast feeds from Univision and UniMás channels, along with adding the Spanish-language kids channel, SupereÑe, to its España and España add-on packs. Sling Latino also updated its website, incorporating more customization features for customers.

But the biggest news is the introduction of local, live broadcast feeds to the OTT service, which allows Sling Latino users to watch programming that's restricted by location, like local news.

This is a first for Sling TV, and represents its first step towards what's been something of a holy grail for live OTT television: Replicating the full traditional pay TV experience, offering nationwide networks like ESPN, CNN, or AMC, along with local broadcast television content, especially local sports and news.

Rival Attempts at Localized Internet TV

Current and likely rivals of Sling TV, like Sony and Apple, have tried to negotiate deals for local network broadcasts streaming over the Internet but have failed, or met only with limited success so far.

Sony's PlayStation Vue, for example, has succeeded in offering local live broadcast options, along with smaller, local specialty channels for sports. But the cost and size of PlayStation Vue's channel bundles, along with the restrictions Sony had to navigate in order to have live local broadcast channels puts the PlayStation Vue service, while technically "OTT," incredibly close to traditional pay TV.

For local sports and other content, you have to sign up for a package that has over 60 channels and costs $55 per month. Also, you have to link up through your local ISP (which is likely a pay TV company anyway) so you can't take PlayStation Vue anywhere you go.

Finally, you can only currently get PlayStation Vue in one of seven major metropolitan areas in the U.S. And if you're a cord-cutter living in L.A., Dallas, Miami, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, or Philadelphia, you're probably better off using an old-fashioned antennae for local broadcast content, anyway.

Meanwhile, Apple's secretive subscription TV platform that's rumored to be in development just hit a big setback this week, specifically when it comes to local broadcasters.

According to IBTimes, on Tuesday, CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves disclosed in a speech that Apple's OTT TV plans had been put "on hold."

Bloomberg followed up with a report based on information from an unnamed insider highlighting the reason Apple suspended work on its live TV subscription service: Media and broadcast companies weren't willing to lower their prices to meet Apple's $30 to $40 per month target. This is not a new problem.

Now, Apple has reportedly shifted its focus away from its years-long quest to wrangle TV networks into a competitive OTT offering, and is instead working on building its Apple TV App Store selection for companies to sell their services and content directly to customers.

The Difference? The Latino Market

So how did Sling Latino manage to add live local streaming without raising the price of its basic package or adding PlayStation Vue-style restrictions?

First, it's a small step in a limited, but active market: Digital-savvy Latinos, and the Internet TV products aimed at them, have been the leading edge in this year's wave of new streaming television services -- like with DirecTV's Yaveo, a short-lived Spanish-language offering that was technically the first-ever OTT launch in the U.S.

But second, Sling Latinos' successful launch is almost certainly due to the fact that Sling only needed to negotiate with one network, Univision -- a network that has been partnered with Sling TV since nearly the beginning.

A deal to add live local Univision content would obviously involved far fewer complications than trying to negotiate with local broadcast affiliates across the country. As Sling TV and Sling Latino CEO Roger Lynch told Latin Post earlier this year, Apple's rumored plan to include all major broadcast networks, localized, in its OTT service was an impossibly tricky prospect.

"When I read about what [Apple's] strategy was, my first reaction was 'see you next year,'" scoffed Lynch. "This idea that they were going to launch something [this past] summer that would include local channels all over the nation. ... There's not a chance."

"Affiliates don't even know what rights they have from the national broadcasters. ... There's so much hair around local broadcast networks that I knew that wouldn't be something that happens so quickly," he added.

Does that mean Sling Latino will be the only Internet TV service with local broadcast content? Probably, for the foreseeable future.

But Sling Latino's Univision deal might serve as a template for how to introduce live local feeds, network by network, to the ever-growing fold of entertainment available for streaming Internet TV -- all while slowly chipping away at the monolithic bundle that still keeps traditional pay TV afloat.