Amazon has closed a deal with the media conglomerate Viacom that will let its Prime subscribers stream new TV shows, the company announced today.
This announcement doesn’t come as a surprise, and confirms recent rumors that the two companies would join forces against the competition. As expected, Viacom’s TV shows will be available across multiple devices, including the Kindle Fire.
A media giant, Viacom controls many TV channels, including MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and VH1. This means that Prime users will get access to popular shows such as ‘The Hills,’ Jersey Shore,’ ‘The Sarah Silverman Program,’ ‘Dora the Explorer’ and ‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’
In other words, the pool of available TV content for Prime users will noticeably increase. According to Amazon, this deal will bring the total number of Prime Instant Videos to more than 15,000 movies and TV shows.
From Viacom’s perspective, the deal comes across as a strategic attempt to fuel competition in the online video segment. While it has a content partnership in place with Hulu and with Netflix, it has also been rumored as one of Verizon’s potential partners if the telco decides to launch its own movie and TV streaming service.
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