Crunchyroll said it reached an agreement with Amazon to distribute Crunchyroll’s subscription anime service on Prime Video Channels in the U.S., Canada, Sweden and the U.K., beginning Tuesday.

Prime subscribers will be able to pick from two Crunchyroll memberships. 

The Fan package, starting at $7.99 a month, allows viewers to watch the entire Crunchyroll library ad-free, with access to new episodes shortly after they are released in Japan.

The $9.99 a month Mega Fan package enables user to download titles, with additional benefits to be added in the near future.

Also Read: Crunchyroll, GSN Team Up for New Anime FAST Channel

“Crunchyroll offers an anime adventure for every kind of fan. From sports to romantic comedy, horror and action to slice-of-life, even the anime-curious can get immersed in our library,” said Terry Li, executive VP of emerging business, Crunchyroll. “We look forward to welcoming new fans into the anime community through our launch on Prime Video Channels.”

Crunchyroll will be available via Amazon Prime Video Channels in more countries later this year.

“Prime Video already offers an unparalleled collection of premium entertainment, including third-party channels so customers can enjoy their favorite movies and series directly on Prime Video,” said Matt Cohen, head of content acquisition and partnerships, Prime Video Channels. “With the addition of Crunchyroll to Prime Video Channels, Prime members can now easily stream anime content on Prime Video.”

Crunchyroll is controlled by Sony Group.

What a difference a couple of years makes. Also, what does that difference say about this current oh-so-messy transitional state of streaming video?

If last month’s man-bites-dog headline — “Netflix launches ad-supported tier” — wasn’t proof enough of changed attitudes, news this week that HBO Max is (re)joining Amazon Prime Video’s Channels program would cinch it. 

Back in mid-2020, that halcyon time (for streaming video, at least) just 2 1/2 years ago, the newly launched HBO Max was still finding its way. 

The new boss, Jason Kilar, hated the service’s initial launch, branding, and more, and quickly reorganized several top executives out of their jobs. The pandemic delayed several original productions, giving consumers fewer reasons to sign up. And HBO Max was tussling with Roku and other platforms over carriage deals, which meant it wasn’t available to many millions of potential customers. 

Despite all that, Kilar knew one thing: being “direct-to-consumer” meant actually, you know, engaging directly with consumers, not delegating that relationship to a cable provider or other wholesaler. It meant owning the billing relationship, handling the marketing, and smartly harvesting user data to shape content, promotions, recommendations and, eventually, advertising. 

And that meant ditching a distribution deal with Amazon to sell HBO Max through Channels to its then-150 million or so subscribers. HBO and predecessor streaming service HBO Now had been on Channels since 2016, to be superseded by HBO Max.

Kilar had sensible reasons for the divorce: Amazon takes as much as 50% of subscription revenue from its many partner networks, plus Kilar wanted to seize back all that data to improve HBO Max’s weak user interface.  

But emancipation had one big downside: HBO Max left behind more than 4 million subscribers on Channels who no longer would be indirect customers. A sacrifice, to be sure, but the company reckoned those customers would find sign back up directly soon enough. 

Besides, Kilar had rich uncle/corporate parent AT&T and its hefty wallet to cushion any missteps as he tried to transition a century-old media conglomerate into entertainment’s future.

Then Discovery engineered the coup/corporate takeover of the decade, and HBO Max and the rest of WarnerMedia joined with undersized Discovery and $55 billion in debt. Bye bye, deep pockets. Hello, endless rounds of staff cuts and a fundamental rethinking of what it means to be HBO Max. 

Which brings us to late 2022. Tactics that made sense just 30 months ago don’t now. 

Now, Wall Street cares more about how much your company makes from each subscriber than how many of them you added this quarter. It cares about keeping those customers around. It cares, a lot, about how soon your streaming service will make money. 

If you can’t compete with Netflix, Disney and the tech giants, despite much-loved shows such as Euphoria, White Lotus, and House of the Dragon, Wall Street wants you to get cash flow wherever you can. That’s especially so when you still have nearly twice as much debt as your company is worth. Giving up some customer data to drive cash flow is a newly worthwhile sacrifice.

So, like a boomerang baby moving back into the parents’ house after being laid off, HBO Max is back in the bosom of Amazon Channels.

"Warner Bros. Discovery is committed to making HBO Max available to as broad an audience as possible while also advancing our data-driven approach to understanding our customers and best serving their viewing interests,” WBD’s Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell said in a release. 

The release, it’s worth noting, didn’t detail how HBO Max will advance that “data-driven approach” with the deal, but perhaps Amazon will share more with WBD than it ever has with anyone else. 

And it’s not just wholesale deals like Channels that are in play here. WBD CEO David Zaslav acknowledged at an investor conference last month that the company is chasing cash flow everywhere, including as an “arms dealer” selling its shows to the highest bidder, no longer reserving them all for HBO Max.

WBD is already selling shows to Amazon, including The Peripheral, a Warner Bros. TV adaptation of the William Gibson novel that has been a solid hit with both critics and viewers. 

“We wouldn't sell everything to them,” Zaslav said, though The Peripheral would have been a natural fit for HBO/HBO Max, coming as it does from Westworld creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan. “But they're an important company, they have a broad reach, and there are a number of other companies that also do.”=

Not mentioned: Amazon also could afford The Peripheral’s pricey $80 million production cost, for just eight season 1 episodes. 

In a prescient paragraph written back in mid-2019, LightShed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield wrote that, just because legacy media companies knew how to make great shows didn’t guarantee they would win with DTC streaming. 

“Unfortunately, what media companies are missing is a full appreciation that content is only a small part of the DTC equation, with technology and data analytics equally, if not more important,” Greenfield wrote. “Gross Adds, Subscriber Acquisition Cost, Lifetime Value, Retention Marketing and Churn are simply not part of legacy media’s core DNA.”

Back when HBO Max began extricating itself from Channels, Greenfield and many other analysts said it might be a good idea, given the potential for harvesting all that data and building a better service (critics still hate HBO Max’s user interface). 

Now we’re in an era where WBD has little room for experiments or investing in the future. Even mashing Discovery Plus into HBO Max, as will happen in a few months, and giving it the unsearchable and inexplicably lame name of Max won’t change that. =

Zaslav is promising $6 billion in free cash flow by 2024, as the company keeps slashing pretty much everything, and does more deals like Amazon Channels and that sale of The Peripheral (it appears likely to get a second season). 

Expect more deals like this. And in 2024, maybe WBD will find a comforting new home that will finally rescue the company from endless cost cuts and allow it become a sustainably Max source of entertainment for years to come. 

Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday announced that the premium $14.99-a-month version of HBO Max will return to the Amazon Prime Video Channels marketplace in the U.S., reversing an extraction that cost the subscription streaming service dearly in its first 30 months on the market. 

Amazon Prime Video members will be able to sign up, enjoy and pay for the HBO Max service using no other app besides Prime Video. HBO Max will join sibling SVOD Discovery Plus, which was placed into Amazon's wholesale market for video services back in April. 

WBD is in the process of combining both SVOD services into a platform that will likely be called "Max." And it now seems likely that the combined platform will be sold via Prime Video Channels, too. 

Neither Amazon or WBD have disclosed financial terms of the relationship. Amazon takes as much as 50% from some content makers to include their wares on Prime Video. It also controls data and the user experience for services sold through Prime Video Channels -- this was a major reason why Warner's previous regime fought hard to "disaggregate" HBO Max from the market. 

However, for the new Warner regime headed by CEO David Zaslav, the distribution benefits that come with participating in Channels far outweigh the loss of user relationship control and ARPU. 

HBO Max had already been integrated into other wholesale platforms, including Verizon +play. And everyone knew a restoration to Amazon was coming.

Also read: HBO Max Goes 180 on Amazon Channels-Style 'Disaggregation,' Signs Onto Verizon +play

"We think we've got the best product, and we should have as many people pushing it as possible," WBD CEO David Zaslav said last month during his company's Q3 earnings call, responding to an analyst's question about the return to Channels. 

"I was up with [Amazon CEO] Andy Jassy two weeks ago at his house," he added.  "Amazon is formidable. There's a lot that we've been doing together that has been helpful to us. They are buyers of our content. Before we weren't selling any content to them, now we're selling content to them. We wouldn't sell everything to them. But they're an important company, they have a broad reach, and there are a number of other companies that also do."

Zaslav has made many key decisions that have reversed course on a "streaming first" agenda established for Warner by AT&T, which spun off the media company and combined it with Discovery earlier this year. 

But the about-face on Channels perhaps marks the most dramatic -- and expensive -- about-face of them all.

Warner finally extracted Max from Channels in the third quarter of last year, a move that the previous regime said immediately cost the service around 5 million subscribers at the time. 

And even through the third quarter, WBD was still feeling the sting. The company said it had finally "lapped" its previous Amazon wholesale deal, but that final vestige still resulted in a 6% year-to-year decline in direct-to-consumer revenue.

For HBO Max, however, the impact of the Channels extraction dates back all the way to its May 2020 launch, which came without app support from the No. 2 connected TV device gateway in North America, Amazon Fire TV. 

Predecessor app HBO Now enjoyed a fruitful distribution relationship with Channels, capturing the majority of its new subscribers via the platform. However, when AT&T and Warner signaled their intention to remove the new "Max" iteration of HBO from Channels, Fire TV negotiations became tense. 

HBO Max app support for Fire TV-powered smart TVs and other CTV devices wasn't enabled until the following November, eight months after the Max launch. With app support on Roku also an issue (that didn't come until December 2020), not to mention the instability of the initial HBO Max app, the platform's early growth was disappointing. 

And there were rumors at the time that Warner's pricey deal with Amazon Web Services was signed to soothe the loss of HBO Max from Channels and get the app supported by Fire TV. 

But the pain was largely seen by the investor community as worth it. Disney had worked to launch its direct-to-consumer Disney Plus sans disaggregation via Amazon, Apple and Roku "channels" wholesale, why shouldn't HBO Max?

Writing in a July 2019 investor note, in the run-up to the HBO Max launch, LightShed Partners' Richard Greenfield estimated that "less than 5%" of HBO users watched the service directly on the HBO Now app. Most of them got HBO either via their MVPD or via wholesale through Amazon or Roku. 

Sure, these services build scale and reduce churn, Greenfield wrote. "But from a legacy media company perspective, we have to wonder why they are even bothering to build out DTC offerings if they plan to cede the consumer experience, billing and the overwhelming majority of data/analytics to a third-party.

This is even more troubling in the case of Amazon and Apple, where they are creating competitive content offerings (Prime Video and the to-be-launched Apple TV+)," Greenfield added ... "Why go through all the effort of building and iterating your own proprietary apps if the vast majority of subscribers will not even use the apps you build?  We also have to believe that you lose brand identity for your DTC offering when the content is unbundled from the service on these channel platforms, further diminishing the original reason for building a DTC business."

In the end, AT&T and the erstwhile WarnerMedia under former CEO Jason Kilar embarked on a much tougher growth journey than they otherwise might have, backed by Wall Street.

Three years later, with investors gasping at the $600 million quarterly EBITDA costs associated with WBD's DTC efforts, Zaslav appears to have provided a response: "We can now take a look at what happened with the Old Time Warner leadership team. What happened with the AT&T leadership?," he said during last month's earnings call.

"How many subs did that actually get them?," Zaslav added. "What was the engagement for that? How much money did they spend to get that? And how much money they're spending in this area and is there any return. So it's very easy for us because we can be Monday morning quarterbacks. And we're taking full advantage of that. And we're not going to make those same mistakes." 

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon announced that HBO Max has returned to Prime Video Channels in the United States.

The move reverses a decision made when WarnerMedia was owned by AT&T to primarily offer HBO Max directly to consumers rather than through resellers like Amazon Prime Video.

The decision was one of several strategic decisions criticized by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav after HBO Max and WarnerMedia were acquired by Discovery under Zaslav.

Removing HBO Max from Prime Video cost HBO Max about 5 millions subscribers. Warner Bros. Discovery’s new strategy is to make HBO Max as widely available as possible.

"Warner Bros. Discovery is committed to making HBO Max available to as broad an audience as possible while also advancing our data-driven approach to understanding our customers and best serving their viewing interests," Warner Bros. Discovery chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell said. "Today, we are thrilled to take an important step forward by announcing that HBO Max is returning to Prime Video Channels."

"Our common goal is to delight customers with great content and continue to collaborate and innovate so we can best serve our subscribers," added JB Perrette, president and CEO, global streaming and games, Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Warner Bros. Discovery is working to combine HBO Max and Discovery Plus into a single streaming service. The new service might be called Max, according to published reports.

"We strive to offer customers the best and widest selection of premium content available for their everyday viewing experience," Prime Video VP Cem Sibay said. "It’s truly been a milestone year for Prime Video, and we are humbled by the viewer engagement and critics’ response to our marquee releases. Now with the addition of HBO Max again, customers can easily add this subscription and enjoy even more award-winning and fan-favorite entertainment on Prime Video." ■

YouTube is still in the process of building a "channel" store that lets users subscribe to third-party streaming services through the YouTube app, just as they do through Amazon Prime Video Channels, the Roku Channel, Apple TV and Verizon +play. 

The Wall Street Journal is the latest to report on YouTube's plan, but The Information  first offered details on the service back in 2020. 

WSJ describes YouTube parent Google/Alphabet as "advancing" its plan for the service, which it refers to as the "channel store."

Last month, Christian Oestlien, VP of product management for YouTube, told The Verge, "I think whether content is distributed in a bundle, or where over time we explore other ways of distributing it, I think YouTube can be a great partner there. We've never looked at the world as these binary choices between us and partner services ... we think all of us can coexist in a really healthy way."

The subscription streaming business has recently done a 180-degree turn in regard to disaggregating its apps through wholesale "channels" distribution on big platforms. 

HBO Max provides the best prototype of that somewhat dramatic pivot. Erstwhile parent company WarnerMedia once received a huge amount of  customer signups for the legacy HBO Now service via Amazon Prime Video -- up to 40%, according to estimates. 

But when it launched HBO Max in May 2020, Warner decided it didn't want to share revenue, data and the overall customer experience with Amazon, which delivered service to HBO Now users acquired via Prime Video Channels via the Prime Video app. 

Warner's decision to keep HBO Max out of Amazon Channels led to a nine-month delay in the SVOD service launching on the Amazon Fire TV connected TV OS, as the two companies worked out a big change to their relationship.

Further, WarnerMedia estimates that it lost nearly 5 million users when it finally pulled legacy HBO out of Amazon Channels last summer. 

Data published last week by research company Antenna -- shown here in the first chart in this story -- reveals just how bloody the extraction was for HBO Max. HBO still has fewer DTC users in the U.S. than it did when it extracted from Amazon Channels a year ago. 

Jump forward to the $43 billion spinoff and merger of Warner with Discovery, and there's been a dramatic pivot. Under longtime Discovery chief David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery seems to be looking for any wholesale distribution for its apps it can find. 

Last week, for example, Sling TV announced that it would sell subscriptions to Discovery Plus via the Sling TV app. 

With only 92 million direct-to-consumer subscribers between HBO Max and Discovery, WBD has decided that achieving global scale is more important than controlling the customer experience at this point. ▪️

Chalk it up to more incalculable waste generated by AT&T's ill-fated video strategy over the last half-decade. 

Warner Bros. Discovery is negotiating with Amazon to restore HBO to the Amazon Prime Video Channels wholesale market, according to Bloomberg. 

"From what we have been hearing in recent weeks, this is a very different deal than what HBO had previously with Amazon," wrote LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield in an investor note Tuesday.

For one, it's believed that HBO Max will now be resold through Channels -- previously, only the legacy HBO app was repackaged through the Amazon Prime Video app through the wholesale platform. 

Greenfield said he also thinks that HBO Max is "gaining more comprehensive data sharing from Amazon for viewers that subscribe via Amazon Channels and use the Prime Video app."

The news of HBO's strategic shift isn't at all surprising. 

Prime Video Channels was a major subscription driver during the HBO Now era, with the premium channel serving as a valuable wholesale commodity in streaming much the way it had in pay TV for decades. 

But when erstwhile parent company WarnerMedia launched successor subscription app HBO Max in April 2020, it didn't want Amazon controlling billing, data and the overall user experience of HBO through its Prime Video app. 

HBO's attempt to extricate itself from Prime Video spurred a lengthy impasse that kept the HBO Max app out of the Amazon Fire TV connected TVOS for the service's first six sluggish months on the market. 

WarnerMedia finally pulled HBO out of the Prime Video Channels market last August, a move that former HBO chief Andy Forsell said cost HBO around 5 million subscribers. 

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” Forssell said at the time. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

But WarnerMedia was spun off from AT&T and merged with Discovery earlier this year in a $43 billion deal. Discovery's management team, which now runs the operation, has a very different perspective on wholesale aggregation. 

This was revealed in April when the company forged an agreement to put Discovery Plus into Prime Video Channels. 

Also notable: In April, WBD also made a deal with Verizon to put HBO Max into the wireless carrier's wholesale market, +play. 

The abrupt change on wholesale agreements is but one major ongoing pivot for HBO, which had spent millions of dollars on aggressive overseas expansion, only to last week announce that it is halting that agenda to review it under the new Discovery umbrella.

"Assuming a broad-based Amazon deal is about to occur, the obvious takeaway is that Warner Bros. Discovery is focusing on driving high-margin revenue and free cash flow and worrying far less about the long-term strategy behind HBO Max or, at the very least, it is no longer prioritizing HBO Max ahead of everything else at the company, including profits," Greenfield wrote.  

Continuing a radical course change in regard to “channels”-style wholesale disaggregation of its services, the newly minted Warner Bros. Discovery has signed HBO Max on with Verizon’s recently launched +play service. 

Introduced at Verizon’s investor day back in March, the wireless company bills +play as a free “centralized aggregation” platform for Verizon customers to subscribe to services ranging from Netflix to Disney Plus to (notably) Discovery Plus, all with a single sign-on and unified billing to Verizon. The +play platform, which is currently in trials and set to be widely available later this year, will also offer its users a centralized repository of lifestyle service options, such as the Peloton fitness app. 

Coupled with Discovery Plus' announcement last week that it will be sold through Roku Channels, the announcement suggests a significant about-face for the newly minted Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Also read: Is Verizon Plus Play the True Next-Generation MVPD?

Two years ago, when it launched HBO Max, erstwhile parent company WarnerMedia went to war with Amazon to, among other things, extract the legacy HBO Now service from wholesale disaggregation platform Amazon Prime Video Channels. 

WarnerMedia was insistent HBO Max users access the service directly through its dedicated app, where Amazon would not serve as a revenue-sharing intermediary between HBO and its customers for vital things ranging from billing to data collection to UX. 

HBO Max wasn't available on the Amazon Fire TV connected TV device platform for its first seven months in the market. When HBO was finally extracted from Prime Video Channels last year, former HBO chief Andy Forssell told investors that the service took an immediate loss of 5 million subscribers. 

But with the transition to yet another new management team, this one headed by Discovery CEO David Zaslav, the approach to such aggregation — or “disaggregation,” as some analysts have called it — has flipped. 

“As one of the largest direct-to-consumer distributors in the United States, we have a track record of providing millions of our customers with great premium content from leading services, and our partnership with HBO Max will build on that trend while speaking directly to customer pain points, like managing multiple subscriptions all in one place,” said Erin McPherson, chief content officer for Verizon Consumer Group. ■

Performing arts streaming service Marquee TV said it has launched on Amazon’s Prime Video Channels store.

Consumers can sign up for a 7-day free trial. A monthly subscription costs $8.99. 

Also: Marquee TV Launches on Comcast's X1 Platform

“By joining Prime Video Channels, Marquee TV is making it easier and more affordable than ever to experience the best in arts and culture, from the comfort of your couch. Marquee TV’s mission is to democratize access to the performing arts and its sheer scale makes Prime Video Channels a perfect partner,” said Marquee TV co-founder and chief executive Simon Walker.

Marquee TV was launched in 2018. It offers performances from the Royal Shakespeare Company, Teatro alla Scala, the London Symphony Orchestra and the New York City Ballet.

The network points to a study by Indigo Research that shows that during the recession, people adopted streaming performances. With theaters and concert halls reopening, 90% of those streamers are continuing to watch online, the study found.■ 

WarnerMedia estimates that its HBO Max subscription streaming platform could lose as many as 5 million subscribers after its Sept. 15 pullout from its Amazon Prime Video Channels wholesale agreement, and the media company is using an aggressive promotion to win some of these customers back.

Starting on Friday, HBO Max will offer its $14.99-a-month premium ad-free tier for just $7.49 for six months to anyone who signs back up, or who signs up for the first time. 

Also Read: HBO Max's Forssell on Losing 5 Million Amazon Channels Customers: 'It's Important for Us to Own the Customer'

The offer is explicitly targeted at users who previously accessed HBO through the Amazon Prime app, but the promotion is available to pretty much anyone who isn't an existing HBO Max customer. 

The promotional price undermines HBO Max's recently introduced $9.99 tier with limited ads. And it will undoubtedly affect revenue for WarnerMedia's ongoing third quarter and beyond. 

However, the company believes the short-term pain is justified by a future in which its service isn't disaggregated through Amazon, and WarnerMedia controls things like data collection and advanced advertising. 

“It’s important for us to own the customer,” HBO chief Andy Forssell told Bloomberg. “If the viewer is in the app, we can tailor the home page to them. We can tailor what they show them next. We can respond to that in real time.”

WarnerMedia announced in August that it was pulling HBO Max from Amazon Prime Video Channels, where it had been the Amazon resale platform's hottest seller for years. 

Those subscribers who did access HBO through Amazon lost their service on Wednesday. 

AT&T said that it will no longer offer HBO as a subscription via Amazon Channels.

The cutoff is coming during the third quarter, AT&T CFO Pascal Desroches said Tuesday at the Oppenheimer Technology, Internet & Communications conference.

Desroches said the Amazon move was  a “strategic decision” made by its WarnerMedia unit. WarnerMedia wants to focus on HBO Max and is trying to convert its HBO subscribers to the newer direct-to-consumer streaming service.

WarnerMedia announced plans last year to no longer offer HBO Max via Amazon Prime Video Channels. HBO Max was removed from the channel store earlier this month, according to published reports.

AT&T is in the process of spinning off WarnerMedia and selling it to Discovery.

AT&T expects that taking HBO out of Amazon Channels will have an impact on HBO Max/HBO domestic subscribers in the third quarter, but that effect has already been considered while compiling the company’s global subscriber guidance for the full year.

Desroches reiterated the recently raised guidance that it expects to have between 70 million and 73 million global HBO and HBO Max subscribers by the end of the year.

Discovery announced that its new subscription video-on-demand platform, Discovery Plus, is now being resold through Amazon Prime Video Channels.

For now, the $6.99-a-month premium iteration of the streaming service will be resold and repackaged through Amazon’s Prime Video app. An ad-supported version will arrive on Prime Video Channels at a later date. 

Discovery reported better-than-expected early subscriber numbers for Discovery Plus in February. But it has ambitious growth goals for the direct-to-consumer service—goals that probably trump any impulse not to have its service disaggregated though the Amazon Prime Video app, a move resisted by Disney and WarnerMedia, among other media companies.

Amazon Prime Video Channels has been a powerful subscription driver for many SVODs, accounting for half of all customers for certain niche services. That comes at a price. Amazon takes around 30% of subscription dollars from services sold through its Channels platform. BMO Capital Markets estimated that Prime Video Channels generated as much as $3.6 billion in revenue sharing in 2020.

But again, for Discovery Plus, which is trying to grow a meaningful addressable advertising business, expanding reach matters. Amazon also announced Thursday that it has surpassed 200 million Prime Members globally. 

The Channels announcement comes a week after Discovery Plus launched on Comcast’s Xfinity X1 and Flex pay TV platforms. 

“Today’s launch on Amazon Prime Video Channels expands access to Discovery Plus for millions of Amazon customers beyond Fire TV streaming devices and Fire TV Edition Smart TVs,” said Gabriel Sauerhoff, senior VP of digital distribution and commercial partnerships at Discovery, Inc., in a statement. “This innovative relationship provides multiple, compelling ways for us to reach and delight consumers with a truly differentiated streaming experience through Discovery Plus.”

Added said Soumya Sriraman, head of Prime Video Channels: “Adding Discovery Plus and its exciting roster of top brands reinforces Prime Video Channels' promise of bringing the best shows to our customers, all in one place. With a discovery+ channel subscription, Prime members now have even more ways to access content they love directly on Prime Video including shows such as Magnolia Table with Joanna Gaines, Guy’s Grocery Games, and Bobby and Giada in Italy.”

Both Acorn TV and BritBox have carved out successful niches in the Amazon Prime Video Channels market, with each SVOD service claiming to have reached 1 million U.S. and Canadian subscribers in 2020.

Is there room on Amazon Channels for another subscription streaming service focused on movies and TV shows from the U.K.?

The BBC, which already partnered with ITV in 2018 to launch BritBox, thinks so. It just announced that it will launch a new subscription service, BBC Select, in the Amazon Prime Video Channels, as well as the similarly modeled Apple TV Channels, in early 2021. The offering will be made available for users in the U.S. and Canada. No pricing has been announced yet.

Don’t look for murder mysteries and period dramas on BBC Select. BBC said the streaming service will be primarily programmed with nonfiction programming themed around “culture, politics and ideas.” 

Initially announced programs include Grayson Perry: Big American Road Trip, featuring the eponymous British artist; Brainwashing Stacey, starring well known U.K. news personality Stacey Dooley; and the history-themed Romantic Revolution from Sir Simon Schama. Also featured will be work from documentarian Louis Theroux.

Given this factual focus, BBC Select will also be competing with CuriosityStream and the upcoming Discovery Plus (although it’s not yet clear to us if the latter will be resold through “channels” partners). 

“BBC Select is for those who crave knowledge, new perspectives and programs that are not your standard fare,” said Louise la Grange, general manager and launch director of the upcoming platform. “BBC Select will combine a rich line up of never-before-seen shows in the U.S. and Canada with a prized portfolio of thought-provoking, eye-opening programs that provide context and color to the world we all share—all in one place.”

Added Rebecca Glashow, president of BBC Studios—America: “As we shift our business focus to engaging our fans direct, the digital space offers us the opportunity to bring audiences a portfolio of shows that bring new ideas and perspectives into the conversation. Our research has shown that audiences are looking for an alternative to what is already out there. BBC Select is it.”

Soumya Sriraman, who departed as president and CEO of SVOD service BritBox earlier in October, has been tapped by Amazon to lead its Prime Video Channels business. 

Amazon for several years has offered its Prime members the option of subscribing, in the Prime  Video app, to third-party streaming services including HBO, Showtime, Starz, AMC Plus … and BritBox. The Amazon Prime Video Channels model now accounts for a significant share—in fact, a majority—of subscribers for many streaming services, which cede the ability to directly bill and collect customer data, in addition to a portion of their platform revenue, to Amazon. 

Also read: BritBox Promotes Powers to Replace Sriraman

Sriraman replaces Daniel Brown, who was repositioned within the Amazon empire in September. Brown is now listed as director of product technology and video advertising for Amazon

Notably, Kathy Payne, a veteran cable industry executive who had served as head of content acquisition and management for Prime Video Channels, also appears to have left the company. 

Prior to joining BritBox in early 2017, Sriraman served as executive VP of franchise and digital enterprises at BBC Studios, the company that jointly launched BritBox with ITV. 

Souyma departed the New York-based BritBox shortly after the company announced the reaching of the 1.5 million subscriber benchmark. 

Last week, BritBox announced the promotion of Emily Powers to executive VP and head of BritBox North America.

BritBox, which focuses on UK content, is currently available in the U.S. and Canada. It has plans to expand to 25 countries later this year. 

Amazon is downplaying a Protocol report that said the company is looking to add 24/7 live programming to its Amazon Prime Video offering.

In an email sent to Next TV Wednesday afternoon, an Amazon rep said job postings for software engineers and product managers emphasizing live and linear programming experience only relate to existing teams focused on local broadcast offerings that are already within the Amazon Prime Video Channels portfolio. They are not part of any new strategic expansion of live and linear video programming, the company said.

Also read: Amazon Prime Video Set to Go Live and Linear

Citing an example, the company said ViacomCBS’s CBS All Access, one of the more popular SVOD services that’s disaggregated by Amazon and resold through the Prime Video Channels app, allows subscribers to stream their local CBS affiliate station.

Amazon also cited Canada’s Stack TV and Eurosport in the UK and Denmark as examples of Prime Video Channels content brands that also allow users to access 24/7 station streams.

Visit Next TV to read more stories like this one. 

The Amazon rep said “hundreds” of live linear broadcast feeds are currently enabled via Prime Video Channels worldwide.

Amazon’s description of its activities differs widely from Protocol’s story, which describes Amazon Prime Video as being on the cusp of a major differentiation of the typical SVOD model, which is primarily focused on on-demand video programming.

Quoting an unidentified industry insider, Protocol said Amazon is “actively pursuing deals to license live and linear programming."

“We are expanding not just the breadth of live content we offer, but the depth of the experience," one Amazon want ad said. "This is a transformative opportunity, the chance to be at the vanguard of a program that will revolutionize Prime Video, and the live streaming experience of customers everywhere.”

Amazon is downplaying a Protocol report that said the company is looking to add 24/7 live programming to its Amazon Prime Video offering. 

In an email sent to Next TV Wednesday afternoon, an Amazon rep said job postings for software engineers and product managers emphasizing live and linear programming experience only relate to existing teams focused on local broadcast offerings that are already within the Amazon Prime Video Channels portfolio. They are not part of any new strategic expansion of live and linear video programming, the company said. 

Also read: Amazon Prime Video Set to Go Live and Linear

Citing an example, the company said ViacomCBS’s CBS All Access, one of the more popular SVOD services that’s disaggregated by Amazon and resold through the Prime Video Channels app, allows subscribers to stream their local CBS affiliate station. 

Amazon also cited Canada’s Stack TV and Eurosport in the UK and Denmark as examples of Prime Video Channels content brands that also allow suers to access 24/7 station streams. 

The Amazon rep said “hundreds” of live linear broadcast feeds are currently enabled via Prime Video Channels worldwide.

Amazon’s description of its activities differs widely from Protocol’s story, which describes Amazon Prime Video as being on the cusp of a major differentiation of the typical SVOD model, which is primarily focused on on-demand video programming. 

Quoting an unidentified industry insider, Protocol said Amazon is “actively pursuing" deals to license live and linear programming.

“We are expanding not just the breadth of live content we offer, but the depth of the experience," one Amazon want ad said. "This is a transformative opportunity, the chance to be at the vanguard of a program that will revolutionize Prime Video, and the live streaming experience of customers everywhere.”

As AT&T and its WarnerMedia division made the frantic final preparations to launch HBO Max on May 27, somehow coming up with original shows amid pandemic studio shutdowns and lining up vital distribution partnerships, one remaining obstacle proved intractable: app support for the most popular connected TV devices in the American living room.

At press time, HBO Max still hadn’t established app support for the top OTT device platforms in the U.S., Roku and Amazon Fire TV. According to statistics released by research company Conviva last year, Roku controlled around 43% of connected TV use in the U.S. versus 18% for Amazon Fire TV. Both companies claim around 40 million active users worldwide for their OTT ecosystems, which not only populate the boxes and HDMI dongles that plug into TV sets, but also the native operating systems of many smart TVs.

Roku and Amazon are disputing how market shares precisely break down in specific regions. Most everyone, though, agrees that Roku and Fire TV collectively comprise more than 50% of streaming in U.S. living rooms.

That’s certainly an issue for AT&T, which had made earlier deals to have the HBO Max app included on Apple TV and Android TV OTT devices and empowered smart TVs, as well as Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation video game consoles.

So what’s the hangup with Roku and Fire TV?

Echoes of Disney Plus

It turns out that HBO Max’s plight with the top OTT device makers is very similar to what The Walt Disney Co. experienced late last year when it launched Disney Plus. In fact, a deal to include Disney Plus on Fire TV devices wasn’t announced until Nov. 7, just five days before the boffo launch of the service.

Disney had to fight like heck to keep Amazon from “disaggregating” Disney Plus content into its own Amazon Prime Video Channels app, according to LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield.

Launched in 2015, Amazon Prime Video Channels is Amazon’s groundbreaking aggregated streaming video service. The tech giant repackages and resells dozens of popular subscription streaming platforms, controlling the customer relationship, including billing and which app the viewer uses to watch the show. The “channels” model has proven so attractive for Amazon that Roku and Apple have copied it.

While they give up a lot to Amazon, SVOD services are able to get wider distribution than they would on their own. Some services access as many as 45% of their customers through Prime Video Channels.

But it isn’t for everyone.

As Greenfield noted in a recent blog post, the whole reason big media companies like Disney and AT&T choose to launch direct-to-consumer services is to, well, have a direct relationship with their consumer.

Ultimately, Disney managed to gain Amazon Fire TV app support but, like Netflix and Hulu, it refused to let Amazon process and resell Disney Plus through Prime Video Channels. (As Greenfield noted, it does allow Apple TV Channels to include Disney Plus programming in its app. But once users select Disney Plus programming, they’re booted out of the Apple TV app and sent to Disney Plus.)

AT&T and Amazon are probably arguing about similar things, with the dynamics complicated by the legacy HBO Now streaming service. Notably, it was the distribution success of HBO Now that inspired a wave of other SVOD services — everything from CBS All Access to Acorn TV — to sign onto Prime Video Channels five years ago.

With AT&T already having an existing SVOD service entrenched into Prime Video Channels, let’s just say the negotiations between AT&T and Amazon have been complicated.

Complex Talks

“A new subscriber to HBO Max or an existing HBO Now subscriber who is automatically upgraded to HBO Max at launch, via the Amazon Prime channel store, would only be able to watch legacy HBO content via the Prime Channel platform and would need to download the HBO Max app separately to watch content that is exclusive to HBO Max (catalog such as Friends and TheBig Bang Theory, original series and movies),” Greenfield wrote, citing just one complication of an AT&T-Amazon deal. “We believe Amazon looks at that consumer experience as subpar and overly complicated. We agree.”

AT&T’s negotiating dynamics were reportedly similar with Roku, which is also now in the business of reselling/aggregating subscription streaming services. At press time, a deal with Roku was said to be much further along than one with Amazon.

An encouraging sign: AT&T negotiated the return of its AT&T TV app to the Roku Channels Store. The AT&T TV app, which houses the AT&T TV Now virtual pay TV service, had been unavailable for download since the beginning of the year. Its return to Roku Channels was seen as an indicator that Roku and AT&T would hash out an HBO Max distribution agreement by May 27.