Amazon Streaming Box Set for March Release
This might not seem like big news. After all, Roku and Apple TV already offer a similar product that allows you to stream the Internet on your TV. What makes the news big, though, is that Amazon’s commitment to developing this product shows that Amazon is committed to its Streaming Service — which started as nothing more than a side-benefit for Amazon Prime members.
Also, Amazon has a MASSIVE customer base. Through the simple act of offering this product, the online retailer has the power to bring millions of new customers into the world of online streaming. Look what Amazon’s first Kindle did for the digital book market.
This is a major shot across the bow of bundled cable.
I can tell you from my own experience and my wife’s that once you are — for lack of a better word — socialized into the world of Streaming, you really do lose your enthusiasm for bundled cable.
Amazon Prime and Netflix might not have all the shows and movies you are currently watching or want to watch, but both services are LOADED with content just waiting to be discovered. Once your brain switches that gear and you let go a little bit (and are willing to wait a year for seasons of “Mad Men” and “Walking Dead”), the Streaming world offers more great content than you could ever possibly watch (Heaven knows I try).
It is also ten times cheaper than bundled cable and there are no commercials.
My wife has fallen in love with British shows, historical documentaries, and all kinds of network shows she never would have watched on cable. Me being a proud philistine, I am gorging myself on the true crime genre — which is comprised of shows that are made unwatchable on regular cable due to at least 20 minutes of commercials per hour.
Amazon has the marketing muscle to use this set-top box as a way to demystify Streaming for millions who right now might be a little intimidated with technology.
Which brings me to….
WWE Launches First 24/7 Streaming Network
Starting Monday, for $9.99 a month, you can stream WWE 24/7 over your computer or TV. This will include all of their pay-per-view events. The emailer who alerted me to this also writes…
DISH Network dropped this Sunday’s Elimination Chamber PPV and is not offering it to its customers. That seems more likely to drive away [DirecTV’s] business than retain it. … WWE had their quarterly conference call with stockholders that detailed their expectations with all this. The one thing they did say is that for Wrestlemania (the next and always the biggest PPV) they have 85% of providers saying they’ll carry it.
If true, what a stupid move by DirecTV. But it shows that these bundled cable and satellite racketeers have no idea how to respond to this revolution.
Regardless, a major content provider launching their own 24/7 streaming network is seismic. How many others will follow suit?
Dish Quarter 4 Subscribers “a Miss”
Dish added 8,000 subscribers to end the year with 14.057M. Brean Capital’s Todd Mitchell, for one, expected to see 25,000 additions. The average monthly revenue per subscriber, at $81.24, was up 26 cents from the previous quarter, but average subscriber acquisition costs rose 2.5% over the three month period to $863.
Just not sustainable.
DC Media Brilliantly Punk’d by ‘House of Cards’
You can’t blame me. Almost exactly a year ago, after the release of the first season, I warned the DC media establishment that the Netflix Streaming series “House of Cards” was a brutal attack on everything the DC media holds dear, which of course is themselves and the Democrat Party. But it’s only now, after giving two seasons of the series more free publicity than Netflix likely thought possible, that the backlash has begun.
Just yesterday that hive of the left-wing establishment media, Politico, published two, “Hey, wait a minute” pieces.
Netflix’s genius Season 2-move was to only make the first few episodes available for review prior to launch, and those first few episodes held the GOP and Tea Party up for some mockery. Naturally, our unbiased, objective, not-at-all liberal DC media just ate that up and awarded Season Two with all kinds of free hype.
Oddly enough, after those first few episodes, “House of Cards” goes right back to blistering Democrats as sexual, ethical, and political sleaze bags.
You got punk’d, self-serving narcissists.
Love you, Netflix. Mean it. XXX OOO
I finished Season Two last night. Good, not great stuff. But it is wonderful to see Democrats get the treatment Republicans have been receiving in Hollywood for three decades now.
Kimmel, Ferrell Suck Up To Michelle Obama
The court jesters have no doubt pleased The King.
Quick Hits
Train Accident Kills Crew Member of Gregg Allman Biopic
‘Ray Donovan’ Enlists ‘Remember the Titans’ Alum for Season 2
Entertainment Weekly’s Dumb Spoiler Rules
‘The Brady Bunch’: Where are they now?
‘Sub Par’ Obama Artist Speaks Truth to Power at Long Last
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