The online retailer is moving aggressively into digital advertising, emerging as a major competitor to Google and Facebook.
It would appear that Amazon has not given up the idea of launching a competitor to YouTube, Google’s massively-popular video sharing site. Amazon last week filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the name, FireTube. While Amazon does not mention YouTube in its application, the lengthy description for FireTube bares an interesting similarity to YouTube’s main features.
NATPE 2019
Wall Street’s Take On TV’s Future
Among a NATPE panel’s predictions: four global mega-companies, digital’s growing presence and cable’s declining influence, news and sports as key to traditional media’s survival.
The Freedive streaming service will include a selection of acquired movies and TV shows, with the launch lineup including TV shows like Fringe and Heroes and movies such as The Last Samurai and The Illusionist.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the New York Yankees are in talks with Amazon and Sinclair Broadcast Group about partnering to bid for the team’s regional sports network YES, according to people familiar with the matter. Journal subscribers can read the full story here.
Exclusives
The Hollywood Reporter has created a two-year training program that aims to increase the number of television and movie executives of color called the Young Executives Fellowship. Starting in April and continuing annually, 25 underrepresented and low-income high school juniors in Los Angeles will be selected to participate. Amazon Studios and the WME talent agency are sponsors, and Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Martin Luther King III will sit on the advisory board.
For Amazon, a slate of regional sports networks would also serve as an added perk for subscribers of its Prime program, which costs $119 per year and has more than 100 million members worldwide. Prime membership in the U.S. is slowing down, but access to sports could be enough to draw in new members.
Bidding has begun for the 22 regional sports TV networks Disney acquired from 21st Century Fox. Amazon is bidding for all of the networks, including the YES Network, sources familiar with the matter said. In addition to Amazon, Apollo Global Management, KKR & Co, The Blackstone Group, Sinclair Broadcast Group and Tegna also made first round bids for the full slate of networks, the sources said.
Amazon’s streaming simulcast of NFL Thursday Night Football games may not be drawing TV-like numbers, but the tech giant appears encouraged by results to date. For the seven games Amazon has streamed so far this season, total combined viewership is up 22% to 14.7 million viewers, compared to the same number of games last season, while the average minute audience is up 36% to 455,000.
The online retailer is expected to make an official announcement later Tuesday that it will split its second headquarters between Long Island City in New York and Crystal City, a Washington, D.C., suburb.
The Trump administration has been considering antitrust proceedings against Amazon, Facebook, and Google’s parent Alphabet.
Chris Castallo will oversee unscripted TV development and executive produce series including Eco-Challenge and the streamer’s Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn series.
In the lawsuit, eBay said Amazon representatives signed up for eBay accounts and messaged sellers to get them to sell their goods on Amazon.com, which eBay said violated its user agreement. According to the complaint, Amazon representatives spelled out their email addresses and asked eBay sellers to talk on the phone in order to evade detection.
Amazon has already shown an aggressive streak when it comes to sports rights, snapping up two more years of the NFL’s Thursday Night Football in the U.S. and three years of Premier League soccer in Britain. As CCS Insights envisions it, Amazon won’t settle for what it already has and before long, it will have enough sports rights to necessitate an add-on bundle by 2022.
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller says he worries that tech companies like Amazon and Netflix are consolidating power, threatening to undermine the way the entertainment industry works.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the decision for the winner of the company’s second headquarters will be made public “before the end of the year.” The company previously announced 20 finalists, including Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and three sites in the Washington, D.C., area.
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — Heidi Klum and Tim Gunn are leaving “Project Runway.” Amazon Prime Video on Friday announced the supermodel and fashion consultant are helping to develop a […]
With the rebranding of its Amazon Ad Platform to Amazon Advertising, Amazon will make it easier for agencies to transfer budgets, aligning it “with alternatives and competitors to its programmatic platforms like Google and The Trade Desk,” CPC Strategy COO Nii Ahene said.
The league is finally dropping a requirement that viewers sign in with a cable or satellite subscription, in hopes of expanding its online audience at a time when TV ratings are declining . Though there are restrictions — no free streaming on smart TVs, for instance — the move marks a significant departure for sports.
With new attacks by President Trump, high-stakes testimony next week on Capitol Hill, and a midterm election vulnerable to online manipulation, tech’s giants are bracing themselves for two months after Labor Day that could decide whether and how much the government regulates them.
Roku shares sank 4.9% on Wednesday on a report that rival Amazon is launching a competing video service that’s free. The Seattle-based Web giant is developing a free, advertising-supported for the 48 million people who use its Fire TV streaming video devices.
The ad-supported tier of CBS All Access is the most high-profile ad-supported channel to become available thus far. To date, Amazon Channels has mostly relied on ad-free streaming services to bolster its lineup of premium subscriptions.
Amazon.com is developing a new device that records live TV, working around cable providers and encroaching on TiVo Corp.’s market, according to a person familiar with the plans. The device, dubbed “Frank” inside Amazon, is a new type of digital video recorder for the streaming era. It would include physical storage and connect to Amazon’s existing Fire TV boxes, the living room hub for the company’s online video efforts, according to the person.
Amazon Prime Day has officially risen to the level of Black Friday and Cyber Monday for American shoppers, leading many publishers to rush out special content features to capitalize on the hullabaloo.
On Friday evening, Netflix announced that it would not be renewing its ’90s-set school comedy Everything Sucks after just one season, and Amazon almost simultaneously revealed that Mozart in the Jungle, which had run for four seasons, would not be returning. The axing of these two shows proves the landscape has changed significantly from just a few years ago, when streaming giants would use a seemingly endless pile of money and keep shows on the air forever.
The drama from PBS Distribution is coming exclusively to the PBS Masterpiece Amazon channel And PBS Passport beginning March 23.
Right now, each of the players is acting smartly given its position — but all eyes are on Amazon.
