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It has been a fairly long time since I had anything positive to report about the streaming world. I hate to be Mr. Pessimism folks, I really do. But I call them as I see them. I think streaming video started with such promise, but the economics really never made sense. The whole streaming world was built on the idea that if you get enough subscribers, then it doesn't matter if you lose money on each one. Sooner or later that whole thing was going to fall in on itself, and let's be honest: it has. Prices are jumping up by double digits, content is being cut, and profits are still way down.

Except for Amazon. Amazon doesn't report profits from Prime Video, because it's a free service essentially. It's a benefit of subscribing to Prime, and not per se broken out as its own thing. I'm sure that somewhere in the bowels of Amazon's accounting department, someone knows whether or not Prime makes enough money. It probably does, though, although that's not the point.

Prime Video's premium turn

Although Prime Video has had original programming for several years, they've really doubled down this year. They spent untold kajillions of dollars on their Lord of the Rings project, and they are one of the few streaming services that is still debuting high-cost, high-profile content without sending it to theaters. But if you think about it, there's way too much stuff on Prime for it to continue being free.

Sure, filter out the probably 10,000 things that are lower quality, older, or non-exclusive. Add to that probably 5,000 more that are offered under their "freevee" ad-supported banner. But even if you put all that aside, there is a fairly sizable stable of very expensive content with A-list stars and a lot of CGI. You just have to ask yourself, at this point: why?

Amazon is one of the largest and probably the most impactful company in the United States. I guarantee it has more impact on people than McDonalds, General Motors, or even Walmart. It's practically impossible to get away from them. What do they have to prove?

Is the collapse of their smart home division a sign of things to come?

Amazon is starting to surgically cut the number and kind of smart devices the offer under their own brand. Several months ago, it was reported that the Alexa division would lose $10,000,000,000 this year. They've discontinued their fitness band completely. More cuts are likely, too, as they continue to streamline. Amazon isn't immune to the change in buying habits in the last 18 months and they're acting to tighten their belt.

So the obvious question becomes at what point do they look at Prime Video and either start slashing or start spinning it off? If they made it a separate division and not a free benefit of Prime, they could easily charge $6 a month for it and have a very low cost ad-supported tier. But I don't think they could charge $15 or more like some of the other services are trying to. There's just not enough there to justify it.

Another idea for them would be to paywall all the good stuff behind MGM+, the app formerly known as Epix. Then make all the "meh" stuff ad-supported and call it a day. They' could definitely do that and I doubt too many people would complain. Realistically it might go quite a distance toward making MGM+ worthwhile. I don't think it's worth paying for right now and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

I think it's more likely that they'll start scaling back their ambitious plans for original content. They may partner with other studios for some smaller stuff, but I would be surprised to see too many more "blockbusters" coming from Amazon once the current crop is out of production.

Does the world even need Prime Video?

There's no doubt that Prime represents a huge value when you look at all the things it offers. You may not want to take advantage of all of it, but it's all there. But at some point I would think that someone at Amazon would ask the obvious question: why do we need to give all this stuff away just to keep people shopping with us? For better or worse Amazon has its hooks in most of us; we discovered during 2020-2022 that we couldn't get away from them if we tried. And I have to assume they know it.

If Prime Video went away tomorrow, or if they started charging more than I want to pay, I probably wouldn't miss it. The few bits of content I really want to watch could be rented, and honestly a lot of the stuff they highlight is available for free on Kanopy and other services. (Side note: if you haven't investigated Kanopy, do yourself a favor. It's a pretty darn good streaming service that's free if you have a library card.)

So if Amazon is spending all this money to keep me, and they don't need to spend as much, and I'd be generally ok with them scaling back… how soon before all of that happens? I mean it doesn't take a genius to put all this together, right?

Folks, all I can say is that if this blogger has figured all this stuff out, it can't possibly be long before someone who matters figures it out too.

The post STREAMING SATURDAY: Will Prime Video make it? appeared first on The Solid Signal Blog.

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