Sources: Amazon weighs creating a live online TV service, holds preliminary talks with CBS, NBCUniversal
Amazon Said to Weigh Creating a Live Online Television Service — Amazon.com Inc. is exploring the creation of a live online TV service and has reached out to major media companies …
Context & Ripple Effects
This lands mid-race: just months earlier, sources had Apple planning an online TV service of about 25 channels anchored by ABC, CBS and Fox for September 2015, so Amazon's preliminary talks with CBS and NBCUniversal mean the big networks are fielding parallel approaches from rival tech buyers at once.
The thread doesn't die here — five years later sources describe Amazon as actively pursuing licensing deals for live and linear TV alongside Prime Video, and by 2023 it is in early talks with Disney about a streaming ESPN, which makes this 2015 outreach the opening move in a decade-long courtship of live programming.
First-order effects
- CBS and NBCUniversal gain a second major tech suitor for their channels within months of Apple's approach, strengthening their hand in carriage negotiations with whoever moves first.
- If a deal forms, the service would sit inside Amazon Prime's existing subscriber base, giving the two networks immediate reach without building consumer apps of their own.
Second-order effects
- A live-TV offering inside Prime would put Amazon in direct competition with the cable distributors that currently carry CBS and NBCUniversal channels, forcing those networks to price against their own pay-TV partners — the same tension behind Amazon's later proposal for a premium exclusive sports package in talks reported with the NBA, MLB and NFL.
- Rival platform owners would have to respond with comparable live lineups, pushing channel owners to license broadly across platforms rather than hold exclusivity.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, linear channels migrate from cable bundles to streaming platforms as licensed inventory — a shift visible in Amazon's later Twitch exclusive livestreaming deals and its exploration of bundling broadband access with Prime Video in Europe — leaving media companies as wholesalers to whoever owns the customer relationship.
The trend: Live television is being pulled from cable bundles onto streaming platforms owned by tech giants, with network owners negotiating carriage deal-by-deal rather than through traditional distributors.