Weekly Rewind
Free streaming video from your library: For this week’s column, I wrote about Hoopla Digital and Kanopy, a couple of free streaming services that tie into your local library. Both streaming services work with hundreds of libraries around the United States to provide a trove of ad-free movies, TV shows, and documentaries. Assuming your local library participates, all you need to access this content is a library card.
Although Hoopla has been around since 2013, this week the company launched its first native television apps on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV devices (but not the third-generation model currently), and Android TV devices. Kanopy began working with U.S. public libraries last year, and now offers apps for Apple TV and Roku. For more on how these services work, read the full column on TechHive.
Amazon scuttles TV bundle plans: Amazon won’t be joining the likes of Sling TV and DirecTV Now with its own streaming TV bundle. Sources told Reuters this week that Amazon didn’t think the model was profitable enough, and didn’t represent the future of TV anyway. (I’ve been saying the same thing for a while.)
While Amazon is more interested in getting cable networks to join its Channels initiative, which offers extra a la carte video services to Prime subscribers, those talks have also reportedly broken down as TV networks resist dividing up their own lineups of channels. I suspect they’ll come around in the long run, but not without more lost cable subscribers, and more consolidation around a smaller number of must-have channels. Amazon doesn’t lose much by waiting it out.
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