Look out Netflix…The deal brings old series including Star Trek, Frasier, and Cheers to Amazon Prime, increasing its library of streamable movies and TV shows to 8,000. Although the companies aren’t talking about the terms, Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker says it’s a “big positive” for CBS. Unlike the two-year deal that CBS cut with Netflix in February, she says the arrangement with Amazon probably just runs for 18 months and would include a payment for each subscriber as well an upfront fee. “These differences make a lot of sense to us given that Amazon is still in a ‘build-out’ phase when it comes to its streaming TV offering,” Ryvicker says in a report. The bottom line: She expects CBS to see $100M in revenue, most of it early in 2012.
Here’s the release about CBS’ deal with Amazon:
NEW YORK and SEATTLE – July 20, 2011 — CBS Corporation [NYSE: CBS.A and CBS] and Amazon.com [NASDAQ: AMZN] today announced a non-exclusive licensing agreement that will enable Amazon customers to stream television shows from CBS’s vast library. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Amazon Prime customers will be able to instantly watch thousands of episodes from the CBS library at no additional cost to their membership. With the deal, Amazon will add 2,000 episodes to grow the total number of Prime instant videos to more than 8,000 movies and television shows, and offer full seasons for 18 popular television series, including “The Tudors,” “Numb3rs,” “Medium,” the complete “Star Trek” franchise, “Frasier” and “Cheers.” Starting this summer, dozens of CBS shows will also become available to Amazon Instant Video customers.
”Our new deal with CBS makes Amazon Prime even better for customers,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com CEO. “We’re excited to add thousands of popular CBS programs to our already great selection, all of which stream at no additional cost to Amazon Prime members.”
“Amazon has created one of the most popular consumer marketplaces in the world, and we are very pleased to make these titles available to their Instant Video and Prime customers,” said Leslie Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation. “This new agreement represents another meaningful way for us to realize incremental value for CBS’s content.”
Amazon Instant Video is a streaming video service that offers customers more than 90,000 movies and television shows available to purchase or rent, and with this CBS content included, will offer more than 6,000 movies and television shows included at no additional cost with an Amazon Prime membership. Customers can instantly watch movies and television shows from Amazon on a Mac, PC or directly on television with any of the 300 compatible devices.




and CBS stock is up almost 3%
Those series are already on Netflix (Star Trek, Cheers, etc). Frasier is released on Netflix next month.
Not that this isn’t a big move, but Netflix (for now) has the content.
The listed programs in the announcement are already available on Netflix.
So this deal simply highlights the basic studio strategy of selling to any distributor willing to pay.
Then all of them will have the same content to sell.
The era of exclusivity is over.
Why is CBS determined to make it difficult to watch Seasons 1 and 2 of “The Good Wife”? As far as I know, the full seasons are not available except on DVD and as single-episode-priced downloads on iTunes.
Season 1 didn’t come out on DVD until a couple of weeks before Season 2 started — which made it impossible to catch up Season 1 on Netflix before Season 2 started because it was over-rented for two solid weeks. And CBS is doing it again with Season 2 coming out on DVD only a few weeks before Season 3 starts.
Dear CBS: I’d love to start watching your show, but I’m not buying your damn DVDs. Figure it out.
“Dear CBS: I’d love to start watching your show, but I’m not buying your damn DVDs. Figure it out.”
Quite honestly, I doubt they care. The Good Wife is a moderately successful series on their network; DVDs may sell well, but I don’t know that for sure; and if someone wants to buy the episodes at the price per, then they’re happy to do that. Long story short, they’re probably OK that you’re not watching it in any of those forums. Enough people are watching it elsewhere.
And then amazon prime shipping service for 75 a year is a way better value then Netflix if they have the same content.
Amazon is essentially giving away Netflix core product to build customer shipping loyalty for their store.
Given their massive price increase for DVDs and Netflix could be in big trouble.
It’s about damn time someone is competing with Netflix as they need someone to straighten them out, after all the bad pub they have been getting as of late.
When will Mr. Moonvees make Soap Opera fans happy and put them on Amazon also? Why does he seem to hate the genre and the fans who are clamoring for Guiding Light and As The World Turns?
I agree that Guiding Light and As the World Turns episodes should be available in digital format at Amazon. There are plenty of fans who would like to see episodes of these shows from as far back as the 1980s or even earlier. It would take years to rerun all of these episodes on a cable channel. Digital on demand video is the best option. Fans finally get what we want & CBS makes a profit. It’s a win win situation.