SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Amazon is adding curated playlists of short local and national news clips to Prime Video, positioning the streaming service as another front door to daily news.
The feature is part of Prime Video’s free news destination and is available to customers in the United States without a Prime membership. Clips from multiple news providers are organized around trending subjects as well as local coverage.
The playlists are launching first on televisions and other living-room devices. Amazon says mobile and web access is expected later.
Local news becomes a streaming playlist
The approach changes how a viewer may encounter local reporting. Instead of opening an individual station application or waiting for a scheduled newscast, a viewer can choose a subject and watch a sequence of short clips assembled inside Prime Video.
For participating stations, the arrangement can put local reporting in front of viewers who might never download a station-specific app. For Amazon, it creates a larger role in deciding which providers, subjects and clips receive prominent placement.
That makes the distribution details important. Newsrooms need to know who controls headlines and thumbnails, whether publishers are compensated, what audience data they receive and how quickly a correction or updated clip replaces an earlier version.
A new gatekeeper for local reporting
Streaming platforms increasingly serve as the interface through which viewers discover local television. The opportunity is wider reach; the tradeoff is that branding, discovery and the surrounding customer relationship may belong to the platform rather than the newsroom that produced the journalism.
Amazon has not yet detailed a general path for independent local publishers that want their video reporting included. RNN will follow which providers participate, how local markets are selected and whether smaller newsrooms can gain access on fair terms.
Sources: Amazon’s announcement and TVNewsCheck.