Weekly Rewind
Amazon puts live TV on hold: Bloomberg buried the lede in a recent story on Amazon Channels, the a la carte-esque TV package that’s available to Prime subscribers. The story, which is mostly about Amazon expanding the effort to Europe, notes in passing that Amazon has “put off efforts to launch its own live TV service,” citing unnamed sources. Rumors of a live TV bundle from Amazon have been circulating for well over a year, but apparently the company is now focusing on building up the Channels offering due to its unexpected success.
That makes sense to me. Amazon Channels represents a different kind of a la carte TV, one that offers a new breed of niche channels rather than just mirroring traditional ones. With the program doing well, Amazon can stay out of the streaming bundle scrum and skate to where the puck is going.
Mandatory sports bundle death watch: The New York Post has more details on the much-discussed sports-free streaming bundle from Viacom, AMC, and Discovery. The price is still floating somewhere between $10 and $20 per month, and the Post claims that Charter and AT&T’s DirecTV Now could be the distributors.
It’s unclear how that would work, but I assume Charter would offer the package within its cable footprint to people who’ve defected from pricier bundles. DirecTV Now, meanwhile, is already available nationwide, so perhaps AT&T will just bolt on a new sports-free tier for less than the current $35 per month starting price. Either way, it sounds like the plans will materialize toward the end of this year.
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