Amazon send Freevee into EOL

Freevee, Amazon's free TV streaming product, is getting the chop. RIP. Pouring one out for all our Jury Duty watchers.

If you are one of the paid-subscription-havin' elites, you may not have even heard of Freevee. And no one would fault you for that.

FAST...

Freevee is a free ad-supported streaming television (or FAST) service:

• Launched in 2019 under the name IMDb Freedive (IMDb was acquired by Amazon in 1998).

• The model is simple: free tv shows and movies, supported by ads.

• In 2020, IMDb Freedive rebranded to IMDb TV.

• In 2022, the product went through a final rebrand to Amazon Freevee.

Over time, Freevee accumulated over 65 million monthly active users (as of 2022). Not too shabby. And yet.

...out the door

Why would Amazon shut down a product with over 65 million active users, you ask? Because Prime Video is cannibalising its user base.

Earlier this year, Amazon launched ads on Prime Video, their subscription video service. Freevee has ads but no subscription. Prime has ads and subscriptions. Things got a bit complicated.

Hence the shutdown (which Amazon assured wasn't going to happen in a February interview with Deadline, oops).

Streaming is going through a bit of a phase

Services are shutting down. Ads are popping up. Everyone's cracking down on password sharing. Netflix is making a killing.

And, amid all this, consumers are left wondering: why am I paying for all these separate, convoluted services? There's a product opportunity here somewhere. We could create a bundle of all streaming services into one. What if we called it... cable TV?