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Amazon.com, Inc. today announced an expanded content licensing agreement with NBCUniversal Cable & New Media Distribution, adding hundreds of popular and award-winning TV episodes to Prime Instant Video, including prior seasons of Parks and Recreation, Parenthood, Friday Night Lights, Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and more.
FNL on Amazon Prime! It will be interesting to see if Amazon continues to beef up its Prime Instant Video offerings to compete with Netflix. Prime costs $79 a year, and most people who pay that, including me, do so for the free shipping, but the catalog of free media that comes with it certainly doesn’t hurt. Netflix costs $96 a year but has a much larger catalog — for now — and most of Amazon’s truly appealing content is sold a la carte. But if Amazon were to continue adding FNL-caliber content to Prime, it could become the first provider with attractive subscription and a la carte offerings.
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Finally. It’s here in the App Store. I’ve been using Amazon Instant Video more and more and recently added Amazon Prime. (I paid the $79 for Prime mostly for the free shipping, but it didn’t hurt that I also get a limited library of free media to stream.) I view all of this stuff on my TV through a Roku box, but it will be nice to also have the option of watching on my iPad.
The best feature of the new app is offline viewing, something I wish had for the flights I recently took across the country. (That would be an amazing feature for Netflix to offer, though I assume their content licenses prohibit it.) The app even syncs your viewing across devices like Kindle: start a movie on your big screen and pick it up where you left off on your iPad.
The biggest drawback to Amazon Instant Video for iPad, Peter Kafka notes, is that you can’t purchase new content, just view stuff you’ve already purchased or rented. Blame Apple for that.
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I caught up on the new episode of Breaking Bad by purchasing it for $2.99 from Amazon and watching it on my television through my Roku box. On my iPad, I kept an eye on the Olympics by streaming NBC live with Aereo, which is still in a free trial but will eventually cost $12 a month. When the swimming was on, I switched it over to my big screen. I followed Twitter on my iPhone, and when someone mentioned that the Yankee game was close in the bottom of the ninth, I flipped on the local radio broadcast on MLB.tv, which cost me $14.99 for the season. The Yankees lost, but it was good night — better than usual, I’ll admit — for getting by without cable.
You have to go read this new post by BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield. (Registration with a corporate email address is required; just do it.) Then start committing this cumbersome term to memory: virtual multichannel video programming distributors. Essentially, TV over the internet. Not TV shows but TV itself — as in, flipping channels and all that. That’s the near-future of cable, and Greenfield predicts “at least one and more likely a couple of virtual MVPDs will launch before the end of 2012.” He thinks Dish Network and Intel are the most likely to move first, even though Hulu and Microsoft are better positioned to do so. Of course, never count out Amazon.
I’ve referenced this possibility here and here, but I really need to write a longer post with more complete thoughts. For now, I should say that virtual MVPDs are not the ultimate disruption of cable — in fact, they could solidify some of the industry’s least-friendly practices, like channel bundling. But television channels delivered over the internet is heading in a sensible direction. As Greenfield writes, “Video is video, at least to the consumer.”
The fifth season of Breaking Bad — in my opinion, the best show currently airing on TV — premieres tonight on AMC, so I figured it would be worth checking on the viewing options for cord cutters. It’s quite interesting.
For a while now, it’s been possible to catch up on the first four seasons with Amazon, iTunes, or Vudu. HD-quality episodes generally cost $3 each, but season passes range — on Amazon, for instance — from $16.50 for season one to $31 for season four. Netflix customers paying $8 a month have been able to stream the first three seasons, but the fourth was only added today. Presumably, AMC’s strategy was to hook viewers with Netflix binges, wring as much revenue as possible from season four, and, in the process, build an audience for the new season.
But what kind of audience? AMC earns most of its revenue from retransmission fees paid by cable companies, so the network certainly hopes a lot of us watch tonight’s premiere as it airs on TV. But cable audiences are flatlining, perhaps decreasing, while companies like Dish Network attempt to hold the line on the fees they pay for AMC’s programming (which is why Dish customers can only watch tonight’s premiere online). That revenue stream may have hit its limit.
To reach an audience beyond what Dish, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, etc., can provide, AMC makes its popular shows like Breaking Bad and Mad Men available on iTunes very soon after airing on TV. Usually, though, it’s not quickly enough for people on the East Coast to watch new episodes before coming into work on Monday. I’ll be watching to see exactly when new episodes appear on iTunes because, for a buzzy show like Breaking Bad, watching a day after everyone else can be frustrating. That’s the cable TV advantage, more or less. I wouldn’t be surprised if AMC, which is already out ahead of other networks on this score, makes tonight’s premiere available for download almost immediately after it airs.
In any event, AMC has priced the new season very aggressively on iTunes, charging just $22 for every episode. By comparison, the fourth season costs $32. That seems like a strong enticement to cut the cord, at least for viewers who enjoy Breaking Bad but not much other programming that comes with their cable subscriptions. Networks with those kinds of shows — yes, HBO foremost among them — have plenty of leverage, it seems, much as Dish and other cable companies will certainly complain about the $22 pricing. Man, that’s cheap.
[Update: One reason the season costs $22, I realized, is that it’s only eight episodes long. Well, technically, it’s 16 episodes split into two parts, the second of which will air next summer, but I assume the iTunes season pass only gets you part one. I still think $22 is cheap, but that helps explain the pricing discrepancies.]
It’s not clear whether Breaking Bad will be available as quickly on Amazon Instant Video as it is on iTunes, which could be unfortunate for people like me with a Roku box but no Apple TV. Still, it’s striking that the question is whether the new season of a major TV drama will provided to me by Apple or Amazon. In this situation, the cable companies look a lot like Gus at the end of season four: outmaneuvered and without much face to save.
