League is advancing toward lucrative deals with incumbent partners and is in talks with tech giants as well as NBCUniversal.
The two-year deal will see National Hockey League games appear exclusively on the Amazon streaming site on Monday nights.
The Amazon-owned streaming service will televise 21 games, including the Championship Game of the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup.
Reese Witherspoon is teaming with Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage on the project, which is in development at the streamer.
While other media companies have been paring back content spending, Amazon shelled out more than $2 billion more in 2023 for TV shows, movies and music than it did a year earlier. Amazon’s total video and music expense last year was $18.9 billion, representing a 14% increase from $16.6 billion in 2022, according to the company’s 10-K annual report.
Amazon Prime video subscribers will start seeing commercials starting today — unless they pay more.
Exclusives
The tech giant is betting that new sports, new products and new audiences can grow its live sports ad biz.
Prime will include ads beginning on Jan. 29, the company said in an email to U.S. members this week, setting a date for an announcement it made back in September. Prime members who want to keep their movies and TV shows ad-free will have to pay an additional $2.99.
Amazon Prime Video plans to carry the first “Black Friday” game later this week, serving Americans touchdowns and online shopping as an alternative to battling deal-seekers at the mall. The technology giant plans to load up the game with sales promotions in a bid to turn the Friday after Thanksgiving into a major digital shopping day.
As Spoon Daftary and executive producer Mike Muriano started building the TNF studio team, they were aware of the natural constraints all pregame, halftime and postgame shows have structurally. But as Amazon became the league’s first new media partner in nearly 30 years, the company also saw the opportunity of a blank canvas.
Amazon Prime Video, one of the last mainstream streaming services to eschew the injection of regular commercial breaks into its movies and shows, plans to start letting them run early next year. Amazon follows a host of other streaming hubs — including Disney+, Netflix, and Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max — that also offer ad-supported tiers, a move that suggests the world of streaming may just eventually mirror the world of traditional television in the not-too-distant future.
The streamer is hoping younger, more affluent viewer demos and ad customization will give it an edge on the field against its broadcast competition.
Amazon is planning to launch an advertising-supported tier of its Prime Video streaming service as it looks to further build its ad business and generate more revenue from entertainment, according to people familiar with the situation. The discussions, which the people said are in the early stages and have been going on over the past several weeks, come in the wake of cost-cutting reviews across the company’s businesses, resulting in tens of thousands of layoffs.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is taking its final bow. The award-winning, hit Amazon series from the Palladinos and starring Rachel Brosnahan will release its fifth and final season starting April 14. Three episodes will release at launch, with the remaining seven episodes releasing weekly on Fridays.
From an antenna to streaming hacks, the Washington Post finds the least expensive ways to watch television.
Amazon is hiking the price of Prime memberships in the U.S., with the annual fee jumping from $119 to $139 — its first increase in nearly four years. In addition, the monthly fee for Prime is rising from $12.99 to $14.99. Amazon last raised the price of Prime in 2018. For new Prime members, the latest price change will go into effect Feb. 18,. For current Prime members, the new prices will apply after March 25, on the date of their next renewal.
Streaming-TV monogamy still isn’t a thing, according to the latest survey by Leichtman Research Group. The Durham, N.H., firm released its Emerging Video Services 2021 survey Aug. 31, finding that 58% of Americans subscribe to more than one of the big three of Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu.
Thursday Night Football is coming to Amazon Prime exclusively a year earlier than planned. This coming season will be the last under the league’s “tri-cast” model, which saw games carried across Fox, NFL Network and Amazon. Starting with the 2022 season, TNF will be exclusive to Amazon (with TV stations in the participating teams’ home markets airing those games as well). Amazon is paying more than $1 billion for the rights.
Amazon spent a cool $11 billion on TV series, movies and music for its Prime services last year, an increase of 41% from $7.8 billion in 2019, the ecommerce giant disclosed in its annual report Thursday. The total content spending includes licensing and production costs associated with video and music offered to Amazon’s Prime members, as well as costs associated with digital subscriptions and content that the company sells or rents, the company said.
ViacomCBS will be promoting new series on CBS by streaming them on Pluto TV and other over-the-top platforms. The Equalizer and Clarice will be available for two weeks after they premiere on the CBS Broadcast Network.
The matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals drew an average audience of 4.8 million viewers on Amazon’s Prime Video and Twitch platforms and mobile properties run by the NFL, the two teams and Verizon. Local over-the-air stations in San Francisco and Phoenix also carried the game, bringing the total audience to 5.9 million, according to the NFL.
Amazon Studios’ campaign for The Aeronauts illustrates the challenges of making “events” out of movies that will primarily be seen online, not in theaters.
NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna believes women of all shapes, colors and sizes should be celebrated, and that spirit of inclusion has made her lingerie and beauty lines massive successes. […]
