The world's biggest online retailer has announced an agreement with CBS to allow its Amazon Prime members to stream 2,000 episodes of 18 shows owned by CBS, including "Medium," "Star Trek" and "Cheers." Further details of the agreement weren't revealed, except that it is nonexclusive; CBS has already struck a similar deal with Netflix.
The announcement comes at a seemingly opportune time for the Seattle-based company. Hulu, partly owned by Comcast, Disney and News Corp., is being shopped around for new owners, a move that raises questions about the long-term future of its many licensing deals with those same companies.
Meanwhile, Netflix recently announced a 60-percent spike in its subscription price, sparking customers' ire and leading some analysts to question whether there will be an exodus of subscribers, currently some 24-million strong, to an alternative service such as Amazon Prime, or to movie rental sites such as Apple TV or Google's YouTube.
At $80 a year, Amazon Prime subscribers, who also get discounted, expedited shipping from the merchant, pay less than subscribers to Netflix, which costs a minimum of $96 a year. (Hulu Plus also costs $96 a year.) Netflix does boast a far larger library, however, with an estimated 20,000 titles. But with the additional CBS heft, Amazon Prime is slowly catching up and will now offer more than 8,000 movies and TV shows.
Amazon's deal with CBS also makes the idea of buying Hulu less attractive to the company. Hulu's pre-existing deals with TV networks was considered the key reason Amazon was initially cited among the dozen prospective suitors, which include Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and AT&T.
Additionally, the move is a further sign that networks value the Internet as another medium for showing content. ABC recently announced plans to license "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" for new episodes online, after it stops broadcasting the soap operas in the coming months. The network hasn't announced whether the soaps will be distributed to viewers directly or through a subscription service such as Netflix -- or Amazon Prime.
Story and Picture via iTvedia
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