
Amazon's internal numbers on Prime Video - edf13
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-amazon-com-ratings-exclusive/exclusive-amazons-internal-numbers-on-prime-video-revealed-idUKKCN1GR0GC
======
reaperducer
The headline makes it sound like a huge number, but when you break it down,
it's minuscule compared to traditional broadcast.

The most recent Academy Awards show was the lowest rated in a decade, and it
got 26 million people in what's called "live plus same day" which includes for
people watching on their DVR's shortly after.

That's 26 million people in just a few hours for one show in one country.
Amazon's five million came from 19 shows, "airing" across an entire year, in
however many countries have Amazon Video.

If you were to break it down by same-day viewership, Amazon's ratings are
lower than a local news show in a very small market.

I'm not criticizing Amazon, at all. I'm a paying subscriber and think it,
Netflix, and similar services are a better vision of the future than what the
broadcast and cable nets have put together. But it's way too early to tout the
death of the broadcast industry, as so many like to do.

Also, The Grand Tour is awesome.

~~~
onion2k
A better comparison is Top Gear, the BBC show that was essentially the same as
The Grand Tour. At it's absolute peak Top Gear drew live audiences of ~8
million people. When the BBC cancelled it (after Clarkson hit a producer) it
was getting audiences of ~5 million. I'm sure you could double that number
including on-demand and foreign audiences. It was a popular show.

To me these numbers show that Amazon have managed to compete _reasonably_
favourably with the BBC, which is famous for being really good at making TV
shows, within 5 years of starting to make their own content, they've built a
platform that people are willing to use to watch that content, _and_ they've
developed a model that audiences are willing to pay for. That's _huge_.

~~~
reaperducer
I think the comparison would be more accurate if we had numbers for BBC's live
viewers and those who streamed it for the rest of the year, since the Amazon
view count includes people streaming weeks and months after the program
debuted.

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ams6110
I have Amazon Prime but rarely watch anything in the video service. I find the
UI to be horribly clunky, slow, and difficult to use. Maybe because my primary
TV device is an old Wii console, but Netflix manages to provide a much better
experience on the same device.

~~~
jschwartzi
At least it doesn't auto-play trailers like Netflix does on my PS4. I spend
very little time in their app as a result of that.

~~~
hanklazard
My GF's smart TV auto-plays next episodes, even cuts movie credits off after
just a few seconds to try to bait us into the next thing. Maybe its just me,
but I generally like to see the credits, hear the end music, etc. Rather than
actually escorting us into the next video, this UI "feature" just compels us
to shut the whole system down out of annoyance.

~~~
cpeterso
You can disable "Play next episode automatically" in your account settings on
Netflix's website:
[https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle](https://www.netflix.com/HdToggle)

The Netflix app on my smart TV honors that setting. Unfortunately, this
setting does not stop Netflix from auto-playing the video when you first
select it.

------
heartbreak
> One big winner was the motoring series “The Grand Tour,” which stars the
> former presenters of BBC’s “Top Gear.” The show had more than 1.5 million
> first streams from Prime members worldwide, at a cost of $49 per subscriber
> in its first season.

BBC handed Amazon a win on a silver platter. They didn't need a writer, they
didn't need a producer, they just bought the ones that BBC threw out. How did
Netflix miss on Andy Wilman and Jeremy Clarkson?

~~~
landonxjames
I saw rumors a few days ago that The Grand Tour has already been canceled
after the already ordered season 3. Really hope it isn't true because it is
one of the biggest draws of Prime Video for me.

~~~
ceejayoz
That rumor's coming from the Daily Mail, so I'd take it with an ocean's worth
of salt until some sort of corroboration comes out elsewhere.

------
rorykoehler
I have both Prime and netflix. I can never find anything worth watching on
prime. Netflix on the other hand is an ever replenishing repository of quality
shows.

~~~
_coveredInBees
I'm a bit surprised by that comment. I actually find Prime to have pretty good
content and typically better movies than Netflix (who's movie library has been
shrinking pretty drastically over the years).

If you haven't already watched it, I'd highly recommend Season 1 and 2 of "The
Expanse" on Prime. There are a lot of pretty great shows on there as long as
you don't rely on DC/Marvel shows for all your entertainment. Other shows that
are reasonably acclaimed are:

\- The Man in the High Castle

\- Avatar: The Last Airbender

\- The Nightmanager

\- Mr. Robot

\- Boardwalk Empire

\- Downton Abbey

\- Sneaky Pete

\- Orphan Black

\- Dr. Who

\- Veep

\- The Good Wife

\- Transparent

\- Hannibal

\- Deadwood

\- Curb your Enthusiasm

\- The Wire

\- Six Feet Under

\- The Sopranos

~~~
rorykoehler
I watched the Expanse on Netflix. It's not really that good but I had
downloaded it and was stuck on a plane.

Of the others the only two I hadn't watched a long time ago (e.g. Sopranos)
that I would consider really good are Mr. Robot & Boardwalk Empire, both of
which I had already watched elsewhere. What I like about Netflix is their
originals are top notch.

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THE_PUN_STOPS
This is off topic, but why in the everloving eff are auto playing videos still
standard on news sites in 2018?

~~~
ams6110
If you're in Firefox, go to the _about:config_ URL and set
_media.autoplay.enabled_ to false.

------
physcab
Amazon Prime LTV is on the order of thousands of dollars per member. If they
can convert new customers to Prime for ~$100 that is pretty cheap. Of course,
media is a hit driven business, so they would have to blend the cost of all
the shows that don't do as well as their headliners.

I personally don't like Prime shows other than Man in the High Castle. And
they are increasingly pushing down other New Releases so you only see Prime
shows above the fold on TV devices (Roku etc). But I understand they are
playing the long game here and quality will probably improve. I used to
dislike most of Netflix original shows, but now theres a steady lineup that I
could watch regularly every week.

~~~
ghaff
Both Netflix and Amazon seem to have come to the decision that, lots and lots
of viewer data notwithstanding, predicting hits is really hard. (In all
fairness, Amazon and Netflix are probably also content with niche content far
more than traditional broadcast does.) So as they've established streaming
original video, they seem to have gone more for throwing lots of things
against the wall than going only for relatively surefire hits.

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reiichiroh
Is Amazon Prime Music woefully small in the US as it seems to be in Canada? I
tried it out and its "today's top hits" contains LAST YEAR's music (Ed
Sheeran's "Shape of You" \+ "Thunder" by Imagine Dragons and John Legends "All
of You")

~~~
dangrossman
A lot of songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (most aired and streamed songs in the
past week) are over 6 months old, including "Thunder" at #19 and "Perfect" at
#2. "Today's top hits" is not "today's newest songs".

~~~
ghaff
It's small compared to paid subscription offerings (or ad-supported free tiers
of something like Spotify). Which means it basically works fine as background
music but isn't great if you want to listen to specific things, especially
current music.

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kodablah
The headline on HN here of "Amazon.com Inc's top television shows drew more
than 5M people worldwide" is misleading and makes you think of ratings. What
it should say is "Amazon.com Inc's top television shows drew more than 5M to
sign up for Prime". The difference is important.

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've reverted the submission title to that of the article.

