Amazon is the latest streaming service to fly the friendly skies.

Timed with the start of the holiday travel season, the retailing giant announced last week that its  Amazon Video service is now offered on more than 150 JetBlue aircraft equipped with free “Fly-Fi” connectivity.

Under the arrangement, Amazon Prime subscribers can log-in to access their video library, including Amazon originals such as The Man in the High Castle, while non-members can rent or purchase titles from the Amazon Video store.

As part of a multiyear deal, Amazon on JetBlue has been integrated into The Hub, the airline’s entertainment portal that customers access on their personal devices.

JetBlue said it plans to complete its installation of Fly-Fi, a service that uses Ka-band satellite technology, on its entire fleet in 2016. JetBlue currently has it installed on all its Airbus A320 and A321 aircraft, and has begun installation on its fleet of Embraer 190s.

Access to Amazon Video complement’s JetBlue’s offer of 36 channels of live DirecTV service and 100-plus channels of SiriusXM Satellite Radio.

Amazon, which recently introduced an option that lets Prime subs download select titles from their streaming libraries for offline viewing, joins a growing mix of OTT services that provide access on planes.

Netflix, which has shunned the video download distribution model, offers its SVOD service on select Virgin America flights. In the more traditional pay TV arena, Comcast and Epix are among those that let credentialed subscribers download movies and TV shows for offline viewing.

The buzz about TV Everywhere is all around us. It has been hailed as a potential savior against cord-cutting and a possible magnet for millennials.

That would be great news if TV Everywhere were, indeed, everywhere. But in fact, it isn’t, and may never be, in my opinion. In spite of the dedicated investments of the industry’s most forward-looking companies, let’s face it: The free, fast, fat Internet access that you need to stream the latest Walking Dead, to binge on Game of Thrones, to watch live sports, will never reach every corner of the telecommunications universe.

Here are some facts: An estimated 60% of tablet owners don’t have a data plan. That means the minute you leave the house most of us have to rely on hotspots.

I don’t know about you, but I hate having to pay again for WiFi access at the airport, in hotels, even on the train. And just try logging in — chances are, if you can get past the login screen, the service will deliver you into buffering hell. Free WiFi is just as bad, or maybe worse.

Sure, I could ditch the tablet and use my smartphone for my video fix. However, a typical cellphone data plan is limited to only 2 Gigabytes. Streaming one hour of HD content will eat that up before I’ve sent a single email. I could, of course, watch four hours of standard-definition content, but I seriously run the risk of data overages — so count me out.

A much better solution is downloading to take content with you on-the-go. Consumers are accustomed to “pulling” content — they do it every time they log onto our video-on-demand portals. Let’s allow them to pull more of the content they already have paid for onto their mobile device.

We already have the rights for in-home viewing, and the technology exists to protect rights holders and restrict the content to a one-time out-of-home view.

To sum it all up: Downloading has become the table stakes for mobile video — Amazon Prime Instant Video and now YouTube Red both enable offline viewing for their content. Consumers expect ultimate viewing flexibility and programmers and service providers need to allow downloading to meet those expectations.

We can either get on the bus, or land under it, because the bus of mobile video and downloading by consumers is inevitably arriving, and it’s picking up speed. Together, let’s invest in true content everywhere.

Melani Griffith is executive vice president, business development, and a board member at Penthera.

The benefit of two-day free shipping on Amazon is apparently a bigger driver of Amazon Prime subscriptions in the U.S. than the unlimited streaming of TV shows and movies that comes along with the subscription.

That's according to a just-release study from Strategy Analytics, which found that 55% of U.S. respondents who had Amazon Prime said free shipping was "very important" to why they subscribed, while 46% said Instant Video was very important.

The study -- conducted online among users ages 18-74 in the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France in November and December 2014 -- also found that of those who have subscribed to Amazon Prime, more said they used Netflix (63%) in the previous month than said they used Prime Instant Video (59%), though that difference is within the margin of error.

"“In contrast to countries such as the U.K. and Germany, Americans are more likely to subscribe to Amazon Prime for free two-day shipping than for Prime Instant Video,” Leika Kawasaki, Strategy Analytics’ digital media analyst, said in describing the findings. “Americans are twice as likely as Britons to cite free two-day shipping as ‘very important’ in deciding to subscribe, and they’re less likely to use the video service regularly.”

Kawasaki said Amazon might be able to boost its video audience by driving more adoption of its Kindle and Fire TV devices, since owners of those are 10% more likely to use Prime Instant Video "regularly."

Strategy Analytics clients include Sony, Samsung, Microsoft (Xbox), Viacom (MTV), Verizon, Comcast, Facebook, Intel and Adobe.

The study was conducted by Consumer Metrix and was funded internally rather than sponsored by any of those clients, according to Michael Goodman, Strategy Analytics's director of digital media strategies, who also provided the client list.

Almost 5,000 responses were received, with a study margin of error at plus-or-minus five percentage points.

A transgender father struggles to come out to his self-absorbed kids who are dealing with their own sexual issues and identities. A hyper-aggressive, African-American lesbian inmate has the hots for a white inmate from the suburbs who mixes with a virtual ethnic rainbow of female prisoners at a federal correctional facility.

The unique and trans-cendent diversity of Jeffrey Tambor’s character of Morton/Maura Pfefferman in Amazon Prime Instant Video’s dramedy series Transparent, and Uzo Aduba’s portrayal of Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Netflix’s prison series Orange Is the New Black have made the two over-the-top services credible players in depicting diverse characters on television.

Their respective portrayals also earned Tambor the first-ever Golden Globe award for the portrayal of a transgender character and Aduba a rare Emmy Award for an African-American actress.

And in a 2014-15 television season that’s arguably been one of the most prolific ever for multicultural broadcast and cable shows (with such breakout hits as Fox’s Empire, The CW’s Jane the Virgin, ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat and Black-ish and Starz’s Power), it might be OTT that provides the ultimate platform for content depicting diversity for both multicultural and mainstream audiences.

ULTIMATE DIVERSE PLATFORM?

Established over-the-top services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon have a unique opportunity to target multicultural viewers by offering content directly to an audience that increasingly streams its favorite content to smartphones, tablets and TV sets, executives said. Meanwhile, new multicultural OTT services like Urban Movie Channel, created by BET founder Bob Johnson, are creating targeted online-video services for specific segments of the multicultural audience.

“Over-the-top streaming is a quintessential answer to diversity because it allows consumers to access exactly the kind of content they want to access targeted to their primary viewing interest, whether it’s based on ethnicity, cultural behavior, or social interests or gender issues,” Johnson said. “There is no limitation on access and no limitations posed by gatekeepers if the consumers are willing to access the programming on an advertiser mode or a pay-basis mode.”

There is certainly a viable, growing multicultural audience for online video providers to mine. African-American and Hispanic viewers spent more time watching video content via the Internet or on smartphones on a monthly basis in the fourth quarter of 2014 than they did in the same period in 2013, per Nielsen’s Total Audience Report for the timeframe.

Further, multicultural viewers over-index on subscriptions to cable, SVOD, OTT and other pay TV services when compared with their white counterparts, according to a recent Horowitz Research study on the State of Viewing in the Age of OTT. Nearly 90% of African- Americans subscribe to some form of pay service, compared to 87% of Hispanics and 80% of Asian-Americans. Among whites, 75% have some form of pay TV subscription, according to Horowitz.

“This younger generation that is on these platforms is so diverse, naturally, that they will fi nd shows that are great and appeal to them,” said Rodrigo Mazon, director of content acquisitions for streaming service Hulu. “We do prioritize the audience that has been underserved traditionally, but it’s truly about great stories and shows that have a diverse and authentic composition.”

Indeed, the expanding multicultural online audience has not been lost on the top OTT providers. For one, Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black has one of television’s most diverse casts, which netted Orange casting director Jennifer Euston a 2014 Emmy for outstanding casting in a drama series.

NATURAL FOR YOUNGER DEMOS

Orange’s Aduba in her Emmy acceptance speech for best supporting actress in a comedy series last August singled out Netflix “for putting something like this on television so that everyone can be represented in such a beautiful way.”

At the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour this past January, Netflix chief creative officer Ted Sarandos touted the diverse casts of Orange and of drama series Marco Polo as examples of the streaming service’s concerted effort to create more original programming with multicultural appeal. Netflix also signed Men In Black 2 star Rosario Dawson to appear in its upcoming Marvel Comics-based series Daredevil.

“Netflix was born on the Internet, so our demographic was younger and more male when we were beginning, [but] it’s far more mainstream today,” Sarandos told more than 200 reporters at the TCA tour. “So you really are covering all demographics and trying to find programming that people love and attach to in a way that leads to retention and creates a brand halo for Netflix as well. We really are trying to program something for everyone.”

Hulu, which already offers same-day replays of such shows as Empire, Jane the Virgin and Black-ish, also wants to ramp up its multicultural viewer appeal through its original content, Mazon said. Hulu original drama East Los High, with an all-Hispanic cast, is the linchpin of the network’s Latino-themed content, which also includes acquired movies and series from Latin America.

“We’ve been committed to diverse, multicultural millennial audiences and content before that and this just reaffirms that,” Mazon said. East Los High, which chronicles the lives of Latino students in a fictional Los Angeles High School, will launch its third season later this year. The service last fall also launched unscripted series Los Cowboys, which focuses on a multigenerational family steeped in the sport of Mexican rodeo.

For Amazon, diversity isn’t limited to ethnicity. The studio’s dramedy series Transparent has been lauded for Tambor’s breakthrough portrayal of a middle- aged transgendered father; he won a Golden Globe for best actor in a television music or comedy series this past January. The series also won a Globe for best musical or comedy.

But established OTT services are not the only choices for diverse viewers. Other startup services, such as Urban Movie Channel, are looking to get into OTT on the ground floor.

UMC’s Johnson said today’s OTT business looks a lot like cable in the early 1980s, when networks looked to differentiate themselves from the broadly focused broadcasters by targeting niche audiences.

Johnson, who launched BET in the early 1980s as the first TV network specifically for African-Americans, added that producers of quality content aimed at multicultural audiences have a great opportunity for success at this early stage of the industry’s development.

Urban Movie Channel, which launched last November as an SVOD service, offers urban-themed documentaries, comedies, horror films and stage plays targeted to a predominately African- American audience.

UMC recently secured the VOD rights to the much anticipated independent film Blackbird starring Isaiah Washington and Mo’Nique. The movie will have a limited run in theaters before it streams on the UMC SVOD service later this summer.

“The OTT content providers of today are a lot like the content providers of yesterday,” Johnson said. “Their mindset to some extent is to go for scale and large audiences, and tend not to think about targeting micro audiences or unique diverse audiences. We’re going to take advantage of that window and build us a unique brand, much like I built BET into that unique brand.”

OUT OF AFRICA

Cable network Africa Channel will launch an OTT service in 2016 that will feature African-themed content from the channel as well as exclusive content created on the continent, according to vice president of marketing and digital Brian Newton.

“We look at [OTT] as evening the playing field,” said Newton, whose service has struggled to gain linear MVPD distribution. “Right now, you have all these people at home paying for channels that they don’t watch, and they do not see themselves reflected, so there will come a time when the viewer will have a choice to spend $5 a month to access programming that reflects their sensibilities all the time as opposed to a more expensive package that may do that part of the time.”

Hulu’s Mazon expects to see more multicultural programming in general pop up on both traditional TV networks as well as in the OTT space, all competing for the eyeballs and dollars of multicultural viewers.

“I think because of the young, multicultural demographic that exists today, a lot of content is being developed and created to target that audience,” Mazon said. “Voices are being heard more loudly now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing a lot more multicultural [content] done in an authentic way.”

Epix said Monday it has extended its distribution agreement with Amazon, giving Amazon Prime Instant Video customers access to such movies as Selma and Transformers: Age of Extinction.

While terms of the deal were not disclosed, Epix will license thousands of new releases for Amazon to stream including movies from Epix studio partners Paramount Pictures, Lionsgate and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Interstellar and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.  The deal also includes films from the classic James Bond, Star Trek, and Rocky film franchises.

“Programming from EPIX and its three studio partners has been exceptionally popular among Prime members and by extending this agreement we continue to deliver on our promise to provide great titles for Prime Instant Video,” said Brad Beale, Vice President of Digital Video Content Acquisition at Amazon in a statement. “Our goal is to offer the best entertainment selection to Prime members and we are excited to continue to add even more hits from EPIX including blockbuster movies such as Transformers: Age of Extinction, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.”

Mark Greenberg, President and CEO of EPIX added: “We are excited to continue our relationship with Amazon and to share our movies, concerts, comedy specials and original documentaries with Amazon Prime members. This partnership highlights the incredible value of the EPIX content offering and provides yet another example of our ability to find creative ways to deliver that content to consumers across multiple platforms.”

Amazon Studios has renewed comedy series Transparent for a second season as the original series sets audience records for Amazon's Prime Instant Video OTT service, said network officials.

The series, which stars Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), Judith Light (Dallas), Gaby Hoffmann (Girls), Amy Landecker (Louie) and Jay Duplass (Togetherness), is currently the top ranked series on Prime Instant Video, although the OTT service did not release specific audience numbers.

Amazon also said Transparent is the most binge-watched TV series on Prime Instant Video, with nearly 80% of all viewers binging on two or more episodes of the series in the same day.

 “We are absolutely thrilled that the response to Transparent has been so positive,” said Roy Price, Vice President of Amazon Studios. “Our goal is to create series that customers love, so it’s great to hear that Transparent has not only risen to the no. 1 series on Prime Instant Video, but that it’s deemed ‘binge worthy’ as well.”