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Amazon has announced a licensing agreement with cable television giant Viacom that will allow Amazon Prime members to instantly stream episodes of current and catalog TV shows from the company's stations: MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land, Spike, VH1, BET, CMT and Logo.
The agreement brings Amazon's subscription video service closer to parity with streaming competitors Netflix and Hulu Plus, both of which have agreements with Viacom. It also gives Amazon Prime content coverage in a few key genre areas for video on demand: comedy, reality television and children's programming.
According to Amazon's release, Viacom shows will become available on Prime Instant Video "over the next several months."
An Amazon representative was not able to immediately provide a full list of shows available under the agreement. However, the series listed in the press release show that while Viacom programming has generally been provided to streaming services on a nonexclusive basis, with the vast majority of shows available on one service available on all the others, there are some titles that wind up as de facto exclusives.
For instance, Amazon's release touts "several seasons of The Real World" from MTV; Hulu Plus has all 23 seasons of the show, while Netflix Watch Instantly has none.
Hulu, on the other hand, doesn't have children's content from Nickelodeon, while Netflix has built a "Just for Kids" section, including a special user interface for some of its streaming devices, catering to parents of small children and built around its catalog of shows from Nickelodeon, Disney, PBS and other content providers.
Let's face it; The Jersey Shore probably isn't going to persuade anyone to cut their cord or their Netflix subscription and sign up for Amazon Prime. 24/7 access to a solid catalog of kids' programming that once required either a Netflix subscription or an on-demand cable box (and for Nick Jr, usually a premium cable tier) just might.
Finally, although Reuters and others reported earlier this week that an agreement with Viacom was "one of the last steps in a plan [for Amazon] to launch a standalone subscription service to compete with Netflix," for now, streaming video remains part and parcel of Amazon Prime: $79 per year for streaming video, a free library of e-books, and free two-day shipping for most packages shipped from Amazon.com.
