The recent deal between Amazon and PBS for the tech giant’s Prime Video platform to stream the public broadcaster’s content may end up delivering some much-needed good news to public media.
PBS already had deals with streamers Hulu and YouTube TV, but Amazon would not accept similar terms, which include hundreds of local live streams, due to the limited commercial prospects of a content deluge from nonprofit stations.
The tech giant will instead carry 150 local feeds, plus PBS Kids, which Amazon and Hulu run 24/7, in exchange for PBS creating three ad-supported platforms: two for its contemporary lineup and one for classic programs from its storied past.
The deal lets PBS stations gain potentially vast exposure without paying a dime, and if successful could lay the ground for performance-boosting collaboration for other public media entities. Meanwhile, Amazon gets revenue from the commercials played during PBS’s deep roster of beloved shows.
PBS in particular has reason to cheer. Not only does the deal deliver its content to Amazon Prime Video’s 200 million monthly subscriber, but it will also be available to non-Prime members under the “Watch for Free” tab. One more upside for viewers: they will be spared the handful of third-party advertisements that typically play on a maddening loop on ad-backed streamers and instead see the same commercials beamed out on linear PBS stations.
Two intriguing facets of the deal are based on nostalgia.
Firstly, retro programming play big part in the terms. “Reading Rainbow” late last month became the first throwback popup channel to emerge from the deal.
Secondly, the deal speaks to an ascendent longing for the old days of channel surfing, when viewing options were solely determined by broadcasters. There have been grumblings for years that Netflix and its competitors, with their bottomless film and TV libraries, have caused frustrating “choice overload” to audiences who, by the time they’ve actually decided on a movie, are ready to turn in for the night.
More recently, the ever-rising costs of streaming subscriptions, and choice overload between proliferating platforms, may be causing some cable cutters to wonder if the bad old days of cable packages really were all that bad to begin with. Current notes that a Horowitz Research report from earlier this year found that “two in three TV watchers in the U.S. are using free ad-supported streaming television [FAST] channels every month.”
We will keep an eye on this potential big boon to local public stations, who like local newspapers have been hobbled by corporate digital dominance.
It would take even more ingenuity to ease the worries surrounding public radio, whose manifold challenges include declining overall radio listenership; competition from the white-hot podcast sector, including well-financed forays into it by legacy players like the New York Times (note the prominent placement of the Audio tab on the Times’ redesigned homepage); and increasingly worrisome threats to its funding on Capitol Hill.
Those threats are nothing new. Fred Rogers, of Mister Rogers’ renown, famously inspired congress to reverse cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that Richard Nixon proposed in 1969.
But the political attacks have gained steam amid polarzation and recent scandals, like that which engulfed NPR last year, involving bias. Trump’s imminent second term has also stoked anxiety, especially in regards to the severe federal cost-cutting set to take place under the Old Media-weary eyes of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy at their Department of Government Efficiency.
Radio content is of course less alluring to film and TV streamers than broadcasting, although NPR has had some success on YouTube TV. Partnerships with increasingly powerful podcast platforms, however, may lift public radio’s sinking fortunes, and spirits.
This article previously appeared in Hearst’s CT Times.
