1104696

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Main Article

Media, Culture & Society

The streaming industry and

2022, Vol. 44(8) 1541­–1558
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/01634437221104696
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Amazon sell more shoes

Tyler Klatt
The University of Florida, USA

Abstract
This paper assesses the media industry in the US by analyzing Big Tech’s entrance
into film and television production and the rise of streaming distribution technology.
Through a case study of Prime Video, Amazon’s prize streaming platform, this study
explores how streaming technology has disrupted film and television from multiple
perspectives, subjecting the industry to new logics of internet distribution, rooted in
platforms, artificial intelligence, digital delivery systems, and big data. In the Big Tech
worldview, disruption is an inherently progressive development. However, an analysis of
Prime Video reveals how disruption is only the latest manifestation of conglomeration
and convergence in the film and television industries. By uncovering the industry logics
that govern the era of streaming, this paper analyzes the streaming industry of the
present while taking into consideration the cable period in the past to account for the
rapid technological development in the future.

Keywords
Amazon, conglomeration, film and television, flywheel economics, media industry,
Prime Video, Streaming

In his opening monolog for the 89th Academy Awards show in 2017, late-night TV per-
sonality, Jimmy Kimmel, poked fun at Jeff Bezos, the CEO of the multibillion-dollar
e-commerce giant. ‘If you win tonight, you can expect your Oscar to arrive in two to five
business days’, he quipped. That year Amazon Studios garnered three academy awards,

Corresponding author:
Tyler Klatt, Department of English, The University of Florida, 4008 Turlington Hall, P.O. Box 117310,
Gainesville, FL 32611-7011, USA.
Email: [email protected]
1542 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

making it the first streaming service to win an Oscar. Amazon Studios won two Academy
Awards for Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, including Best Original
Screenplay and Best Actor for Casey Affleck’s performance. In addition, the Big Tech
company won the Best Foreign Language Film category for Asghar Farhadi’s The
Salesman.
This paper assesses the current configuration of the media industry in the US by ana-
lyzing Big Tech’s entrance into film and television production and the rise of streaming
distribution technology. Today, publications in the press consistently tout the rise of
streaming as the end of cinema and television. Titles like ‘The Death of the DVD’
(Whitten, 2019), ‘R.I.P. Cable TV’ (Schneider and Aurthur, 2020), and ‘The Movie
Theater as We Know it is Dying’ (Jackson, 2020) frame streaming as a moment of crisis
and radical disruption in the popular imagination. Yet, for over a century, cinema and tel-
evision have undergone a series of technological mutations. The birth of the movie theater,
the emergence of sound, the advent of television, the appearance of VHS and DVD, the
inception of digital technology, and more recently, the rise of streaming all created new
forms of the moving image that challenged the conceptual parameters of film and televi-
sion. So, how did disruption become the buzzword of streaming services?
In this paper, I explore the ongoing debate about streaming services with a focus on
Big Tech’s role in the new entertainment economy through a case study of Prime Video,
Amazon’s prized Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) platform. In what follows, I
map the industrial, social, economic, and technological geographies that surround Prime
Video to put forward a media industry analysis that resituates the so-called ‘great disrup-
tion’ of streaming services within the history of the moving image. Today, the rulers of
Hollywood are not the studios but their parent companies, media and telecommunica-
tions giants like Comcast (the Owner of Universal), National Amusements (Paramount),
AT&T (Warner Bros), Sony (Columbia), and Disney (20th Century Studios). As Schatz
(2009) notes, Disney was the one studio that was not incorporated into an existing media
giant, instead, it became one. The tide of deregulation in the 1980s under the Reagan
administration that crested in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 radically reconfig-
ured the television and film market. The cultural zeitgeist of neoliberal, free-market eco-
nomic policies established the era of cross-ownership, integration, and conglomeration
that typify the media industry today (Kunz, 2006; Schatz, 2009). Nevertheless, the
increasing importance of the internet economy within the film and television industries
could tip the balance of power to new contenders.
Amazon’s powerful hold over the internet market requires a new lexicon of concepts
and terms for thinking about film and television in the age of streaming. As Johnson
(2019) argues in her foundational study of the streaming industry, Online TV, ‘the trans-
formations we are witnessing challenge the usefulness of the terminology and concepts
that we have at hand to talk about television’ (p. 4). Throughout this paper, I borrow some
of the key terms put forward by Johnson (2019), including ‘TV Natives’ to refer to the
media and telecommunications conglomerates that dominated the broadcast and cable
era and ‘Online Natives’ to refer to the new media companies (e.g. Amazon, Netflix, and
Google) that emerged in the wake of the internet revolution that engage in feature-length
film and serial television distribution (p. 54). Through a case study of Prime Video, I
track the rise of streaming in the US entertainment market to assess the influence of Big
Tech in film and television production and distribution.
Klatt 1543

Discussions of Amazon’s disruptive monopoly power have become commonplace

(Berg and Knights, 2019; Brevini and Swiatek, 2021). My research builds on these stud-
ies with a focus on Amazon’s film and television divisions. Despite the emphasis on
disruption, my project acknowledges the shared evolutionary history of the moving
image and the film and television industries, even in the face of transformation. Big Tech
has entered the film and television market bringing new industry strategies driven by
internet distribution, AI, platforms, and big data economies. However, the company’s
tactics are not entirely new. Many of the conglomeration strategies Amazon employs
were perfected by the media and telecommunications giants of the cable era.
In the 21st century, an emerging field of scholarship has responded to the way
streaming services have impacted the film and television industries. Across their work,
Across their work Tryon (2013), Johnson (2019, 2021), Evans and Donders (2018),
and Lotz (2017, 2018) situate the ‘disruption’ of streaming historically and establish
broad methodologies and paradigms for analyzing the online film and television indus-
tries. In the cable era, media giants established control over movie studios, broadcast
networks, cable programing services, and home media, such as VHS and DVD. The
way Comcast owns a major movie studio (Universal Pictures), the broadcast network
(NBC), multiple cable channels (USA Network, E!, and Bravo), and the cable provider
(Xfinity) offers one example. This literature explores a similar terrain in relation to
Amazon’s conglomeration strategies that challenge the historic regulation of the enter-
tainment industries and shift the battleground to new digital markets rooted in the
internet infrastructure.
Together, this constellation of scholars provides useful but broad tools and frame-
works for thinking about the shift to online film and television with a focus on internet
distribution, digital media players, AI, platforms, and big data economies. Broad tools
and frameworks are productive for making sense of conglomeration strategies in the
streaming industry. However, what is needed moving forward is more work that applies
this research to specific platforms and geographic contexts to analyze more closely indi-
vidual streaming services. While these strategies are not unique to Amazon, the way
Amazon has mobilized its growing hold over the internet infrastructure to become the
second largest streaming service platform makes it a significant object of analysis (See
Table 1). Works like Johnson’s (2018) From Networks to Netflix, Barker and Wiatrowski’s
(2017) The Age of Netflix, and McDonald and Smith-Rowsey’s (2016) The Netflix Effect
emphasize the way research on streaming often remains Netflix-centric. Nevertheless,
Amazon’s growing control of the internet infrastructure through Amazon Web Services
and its line of Fire TV software and digital media players position the company as a
formidable market leader in the US entertainment industry. While Netflix remains a sig-
nificant figure in the popularization of streaming, my research moves beyond investiga-
tions of Netflix to bring into view Amazon’s hold over the new distribution economy.
In this article, I show how the success of Prime Video is defined by the company’s
ability to create powerful synergies between its interrelated technologies, devices, and
infrastructures. At the Code Conference in 2016, Bezos described this business strategy
as a ‘flywheel effect’. In Good to Great, Collins (2001) coined the term ‘the flywheel
effect’ to refer to a self-sustaining system where a single company profits from intercon-
nected revenue streams from diverse markets. At the annual Code Conference, Jeff Bezos
explained his vision for Amazon Studios, ‘when we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell
1544 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

Table 1. US SVOD Landscape as seen on the VIP+ Variety Intelligence Platform.

Platform Launch Estimated Reach in 2020

Netflix Jan 2007 195 m (paid subs)
Hulu March 2008 32.5 m (paid subs)
Prime Video Feb 2011 140.7 m (have access)
CBS All Access (rebranded as Paramount + in 2021) Oct 2014 N/A*
Showtime July 2015 N/A*
Starz Apr 2016 9.2 m (paid subs)
Disney + Nov 2019 86.8 m (paid subs)
Apple TV+ Nov 2019 42.6 m (have access)
Peacock Ap 2020 26 m (free and paid users)
HBO Max May 2020 28.7 m (have access)

*Viacom/CBS counted 17.9 m domestic subs for all of its paid streamers, including CBS All Access (re-
branded as Paramount +) and Showtime.

more shoes’ (Vox, 2016). For Bezos, Amazon Studios and Prime Video are key spokes in
the company’s flywheel. The flywheel effect can be likened to a pottery wheel. As the
potter puts pressure on the pedal, the wheel begins to spin. Eventually, the wheel begins
to generate its own momentum. Award shows like the Golden Globes incentivize con-
sumers to sign-up for Amazon Prime, the company’s subscription service that offers
2-day shipping, music, and exclusive original film and television content. Consumer data
reveals that Prime members buy more than non-members. In turn, these increased profits
generate more funds for licensing and production of original entertainment for Amazon’s
video streaming platform, Prime Video. More programing increases Amazon’s chances
of garnering more awards.
The focus of this paper highlights four important spokes of Amazon’s entertainment
flywheel: (1) the company’s original film and television production arm, Amazon
Studios, (2) its online video streaming platforms, Prime Video and IMDb TV, (3) the
manufacture and sale of digital media players, including Fire Sticks and Fire Cubes, as
well as Smart devices such as Fire Television and Fire Tablets, and (4) its cloud comput-
ing network, Amazon Web Services. While each of these four operations appear in dif-
ferent markets, they contribute to a flywheel effect, creating powerful synergies across
the film and television market. Through these synergies, Amazon can exert its influence
across all three levels of the entertainment industry – from production, to distribution, to
exhibition – to exert its monopoly grasp on the market.

Prime Video and Big Tech’s red-carpet debut

Table 1 shows the emerging SVOD landscape by tracking the initial reach of major mar-
ket players. Data on subscribers is inherently unstable. Nevertheless, the figures reflect
the initial success of Amazon’s business strategies. This table illustrates the dominance
of the streaming market. In 2020, 74% of all US homes were subscribed to a streaming
service (Koblin, 2020). That number is only increasing. While the number of films that
Klatt 1545

open at the box office continues to surge in the US and Canada, consumer spending is
steadily tipping toward digital distribution. From 2015-2019, the US digital film market
increased by 400% ballooning from 8.9 billion to 20.5 billion (Motion Picture Association,
2019). In the same report from 2019, the MPA found that digital revenue accounted for
56% of the US entertainment market, followed by the theatrical market at 31%, and the
physical market at 13%. These figures reflect the dominance of streaming that led to the
decline of the DVD market which peaked in 2005 and has been in a recession since 2007
(Whitten, 2019).
Streaming services rely on the internet, digital technology, platforms, operating sys-
tems, and mobile devices. However, streaming services are also objects of discourse,
produced by culture within language, and therefore the subject of examination, scrutiny,
and debate. Amazon’s status as a Big Tech company contributes to the construction of
Prime Video and other streaming services as ‘the great disruptor’. The way Big Tech
signifies upheaval in the popular imaginary offers another explanation for the general
discursive construction of streaming services as a fundamentally disruptive technology.
For some, Big Tech has become a cultural shorthand for big business and monopoliza-
tion. For others, Big Tech represents the possibilities of techno-utopianism, non-con-
formism, and entrepreneurial spirit. Nevertheless, the same thread of disruption unites
both narratives. Those who seek to curtail Big Tech’s market power and those who dream
of a techno-utopian world both rely on the discursive framing of Big Tech as the great
disruptor.
It is easy to be blinded by the shiny rhetoric of Big Tech that fetishizes the new, the
entrepreneur, and disruption. Streaming services have radically reconfigured the indus-
try, modes of consumption, and esthetic conventions across film and television. Big Tech
and the internet have transformed film and television in the US. Nevertheless, Amazon’s
market strategies remain both old and new. Amazon’s streaming platform, Prime Video,
and its original film and series production and distribution arm, Amazon Studios rely on
a complicated infrastructure, including the historic film and television industries, venture
capitalists, the internet, state and federal legislation, as well as digital and mobile devices.
Amazon’s rise to market prominence in the film and television industries is not
Promethean but the result of the sum of these forces.

Amazon’s economies of scale

In 2020, Amazon reported a net worth of 1.7 trillion dollars, making its founder, Jeff
Bezos, the richest man in the world (Palmer, 2020a). Amazon.com went live as an online
book vendor in 1995, headquartered in Seattle. Today, the company is the largest online
retailer in the world, offering a seemingly inexhaustible list of goods on its e-commerce
platform. Amazon entered the media distribution industry in 2006 with Amazon Unbox,
a transaction-based video distribution and download service that allowed customers to
rent or purchase films and television shows for a small fee. The company rebranded the
service several times, changing its name from Amazon Video on Demand to Amazon
Instant Video before settling on Prime Video in 2011, when Amazon launched its SVOD
service (Brevini and Swiatek, 2021). The introduction of Amazon Studios in 2010
marked a significant turning point for the company. Amazon now offers nearly all the
1546 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

Table 2. Reported total net sales of top media companies in the US (in millions).

Company 2020 Revenue (in millions) 2019 2018

Amazon 386,064 280,522 232,887
Apple 274,515 260,174 265,595
Alphabet 182,427 161,857 136,819
AT&T 171,760 181,193 170,176
Comcast 103,564 108,942 94,507
Sony* 82,500 76,000 78,000
Disney 65,388 69,607 59,434
Netflix 24,996 20,156 15,794
ViacomCBS** 25,285 26,998 NA

*Revenue is taken from the companies’ 10-K Annual Report Form, except for Sony, who submits Form 20-F.
**There is no recorded revenue for ViacomCBS before their merger in 2019.

services that a traditional studio boasts – from financing to production to rolling out
pictures in cinemas and film and television on streaming platforms.
Today, Amazon uses the leverage it achieved through its long-term growth model to
extend its influence in the film and television industries. In 2020, Amazon reported
$386,064 billion in revenue. According to an article in Variety, that year, Amazon spent
$7.6 billion on Prime Video content (VIP+ Variety Intelligence Platform, 2021). The
sheer revenue of Amazon is enough to worry competitors. For a comparison of the yearly
revenue of the top media companies and their content spending in the US (see Table 2).
Since its founding, Amazon has prioritized growth over profitability by recycling reve-
nue into the many spokes of its flywheel to establish market leadership and economies of
scale. As Bezos notes in his 1997 shareholder letter, ‘We will continue to make invest-
ment decisions in light of long-term market leadership considerations rather than short-
term profitability considerations or short-term Wall Street reactions’ (Isaacs, 2021: 2).
Amazon’s growing influence in the film and television industries is a result of its long-
term, flywheel business strategy. Amazon’s purchase of IMDb, the online database for
information on film and television, exemplifies this logic. IMDb (2021) announced that
it had over 8 million titles in its database with over 6 million user generated reviews
(IMDb.com). Amazon purchased IMDb in 1998, 8 years before the company launched its
first digital distribution and download movie service, Amazon Unbox, in 2006 (Durkee,
2021). Investors likely scoffed when Bezos expressed his intention to purchase IMDb for
55 million back in 1998. However, Amazon has seen a considerable return of investment
for this early acquisition. Through IMDb, Amazon has acquired decades worth of invalu-
able user data about the movies and television, long before the company entered the
streaming market.
Amazon mobilizes its diverse revenue streams to license entertainment, create origi-
nal award-winning programing, and beat out competitors for distribution rights.
Amazon’s market influence is best exemplified by the 2016 scandal at Sundance when
Amazon purchased the rights for the Oscar-winning Manchester by the Sea for $10 mil-
lion, snubbing competitors Sony, Universal, and Lionsgate (Fleming, 2016). The scope
Klatt 1547

Table 3. US SVOD catalog size in 2020 as seen on the VIP+ Variety Intelligence Platform.

Platform Catalog size

Movies TV shows Total

Prime Video 14,400 2200 16,600
Netflix 3900 2000 5900
Hulu 900 1700 2600
HBO Max 1900 500 2400
Peacock 900 400 1300
Starz 1000 100 1100
CBS All Access* 500 500 1000
Showtime 500 100 600
Disney + 700 500 1200
Apple TV+ 14 32 46

*CBS All Access rebranded as Paramount + in 2021.

of Amazon’s movie catalog on Prime Video dwarfs its competitors with an estimated
14,000 films available for streaming in 2020 (VIP+ Variety Intelligence Platform, 2021).
Prime Video’s closest contenders are Netflix with approximately 3900 films and HBO
Max with a reported 1900 films (see Table 3). These statistics illustrate the real threat of
Amazon’s market dominance and the importance of understanding flywheel economics
and long-term market leadership considerations in the entertainment industry.
Understanding the flywheel effect is critical for analyzing the logics that govern the
film and television industries in the past and in the streaming era. One of the ways
Amazon strategically avoids antitrust penalties is by insisting that the company does not
engage in horizontal integration. In 2020, when the company was facing anti-trust pres-
sure from the EU, Amazon executives were quick to point out that the company repre-
sents less than 1% of the global retail market (Palmer, 2020b). While there is no precise
legal definition for a monopoly, antitrust law in the US typically defines a monopoly as
a firm or group of firms that has a market share of over 80% (Myers, 2019). However, as
Myers demonstrates, defining a market can be tricky in the court of law. In the US,
Amazon holds roughly 39.5% of e-market sales, 1.4% of the grocery market, and 6.6%
of the apparel market (Myers, 2019: 393). Wilke and Myers insist that there are problems
with defining Amazon’s numerous verticals as one marketplace. Nevertheless, what
Wilke’s analysis obscures is the way Amazon’s many verticals contribute to a vast, spin-
ning flywheel. While each of these four services appears in different markets, they con-
tribute to a flywheel effect, creating powerful synergies that grant Amazon a significant
edge in the film and television industries.
In the past, conglomerate Hollywood’s control of the film and television industries
rested in their ability to produce artificial scarcity through business strategies like win-
dowing, bundling, territorialization, and forced integration (Strangelove, 2015).
However, the move toward internet services and platform technologies could shift the
balance of power to Big Tech companies like Amazon, Google, Netflix, and Apple, who
1548 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

dominate the new internet related markets. Streaming services are increasingly using the
internet to bypass TV Natives’ traditional gatekeeping methods. A brief survey of
Amazon’s entertainment business operations reveals some of the ways the company is
harnessing the emerging internet economy to outmaneuver TV Native conglomerates.

The spokes of the wheel

Amazon Studios is the production and distribution arm of the e-commerce giant. As of
2020, Amazon Studios has received 143 Emmy nominations and 12 Oscar nominations
for its original programing (Bridge, 2020). Amazon is developing an extensive library of
original programing, known as Amazon Originals, for its streaming service, Prime Video.
According to one estimate, ‘Amazon Prime Video launched 314 hours of original first-
run content worldwide in 2019’ (Stoll, 2021). The ‘original’ is central in the business of
streaming platforms. As Lotz (2018) notes, in the cable era, ‘creating original program-
ming was a good way to build a channel’s brand. And the combination of a clear brand
and original programing was valuable to all the ways cable channels earn revenue’ (p.
19). Like the conglomerates of the cable era, Amazon sees original programing as a valu-
able means to increase subscriptions to its streaming platforms and establish its brand
identity. Originals incentivize viewers to subscribe and watch content that they can view
‘nowhere else’. Today, the global infrastructure of the internet has shifted the idea of the
television ‘original’ from ‘a local utility to a global commodity’ (Evans and Donders,
2018: 9). Prime Video is now available in over 200 countries, with International Original
divisions in Japan, India, Europe, Mexico, and Brazil (Amazon.com Inc, 2022; Hipes,
2018). Amazon’s move into international markets recalls the spatial logic embedded in
the term ‘over-the-top’ (OTT) media to describe the delivery of television using internet
protocols instead of conventional radio frequencies. In this context, the phrase over-the-
top quite literally embodies the metaphor of trespassing – like climbing over a wall or
fence – to describe the capabilities of multinational platforms to bypass local markets.
It is easy to frame Amazon Studios as ‘the great disruptor’ when we focus on their
internet distribution strategies. Nevertheless, it is also important to highlight the way
Amazon and TV Natives often function as symbiotic partners. van Dijck et al. (2018)
argue for the way online platforms are not distinct, online markets but inextricably linked
with existing societal structures (p. 2). Amazon has entered into content licensing agree-
ments with notable media companies including Starz, Twentieth-Century Fox, CBS,
HBO, A24, and NBCUniversal, to name a few (MarketLine, 2021). Currently, Amazon
operates two streaming platforms. Amazon launched Prime Video in 2011 and IMDb TV
in 2019. Amazon licenses thousands of films and television shows from motion picture
distributors, broadcast networks, and cable channels. Licensing in the streaming era is
not all that different from the practice of syndication that dominated the broadcast and
cable periods. Syndication occurs when motion picture distributors, broadcast networks,
and cable channels sell the rights to the exhibition of television programs, feature films,
and other content (Kunz, 2006). The result of this symbiosis is a dramatic increase in
watch time. The rise of streaming technology has sparked a dramatic increase of the
number of films and television shows released each year (Koblin, 2020). For the most
part, all that streaming travels on the same wires provided by the internet service
Klatt 1549

providers, like Comcast and AT&T, who also offer cable services. These interactions
demonstrate how Amazon relies on the existing film and television industries and chal-
lenge oversimplified claims that position Hollywood and Big Tech as a strict binary.
Much has been written on the way platforms harvest user data to turn massive profits.
Flew (2021), van Dijck et al. (2018), and Srnicek (2017) offer foundational studies that
analyze the processes and strategies of platforms. Since the mid-2010s we have wit-
nessed the increasing ‘platformization of the internet’ (Flew, 2021: viii). As the entertain-
ment merges with the internet, we are witnessing a platformization of film and television
too (Evans and Donders, 2018). Streaming services rely on algorithmic systems and data
mining to recommend content and produce original programing. Within the streaming
economy, platforms serve as a critical point of contact for data sharing between the
viewer and the media company. By using Prime Video and IMDb TV, media consumers
teach Amazon what they like to watch and when they want to watch it, making the algo-
rithms better at recommending content and ensuring that users renew their subscriptions.
I use the term data exchange points (DEPs) to describe the place of contact where user
data is shared and harvested. Streaming platforms, virtual assistant AI technology, like
Amazon Alexa, and Digital Media Players, like the Amazon Fire Stick all function as
DEPs. Competition in the streaming entertainment market is characterized by the effort
to maximize the number of DEPs to harvest user information. As a result, many of
Amazon’s competitors operate numerous streaming platforms, and this pattern will likely
continue. By maintaining a diverse range of devices, channels, and streaming platforms,
Amazon’s generates a multiplicity of contact points where data can be harvested to
enhance Amazon’s flywheel operations. The more DEPs that exist, the more opportuni-
ties Amazon has to learn about its consumers and increase its productivity.
DEPs have revolutionized the film and television industries. Nevertheless, DEPs rely
on an older business strategy, known as bundling. Bundling describes the practice of sell-
ing distinct commodities under one price tag. Media conglomerates have long relied on
bundling to maintain a market edge. The way domestic cable and satellite television
services offer channels in ‘bundles’, is an example of commodity bundling. Much has
been written on the way commodity bundling functions as a means of monopoly power
(Chung et al., 2014). By bundling, channel providers block competitors from entering
the marketplace while maintaining competitively low prices that drive subscription. The
Amazon Prime subscription model exemplifies the logic of bundling. For one price,
Prime subscribers have access to 2-day shipping services, Prime Video, Amazon Music
Prime, Prime Gaming, Prime Reading, and more. All these benefits serve as critical
points of data sharing between the user and Amazon. Within the economy of streaming
services, bundling emerges as a data harvesting strategy within the global internet econ-
omy. In addition to Prime Video and IMDb TV, viewers can increase their subscription
bundle by adding streaming channels with exclusive content such as SundanceNow,
AcornTV, Shudder, and Showtime. Bundling devices, channels, and platforms block
competitors from entering the market and present new opportunities for data
harvesting.
Amazon’s OTT business strategy is disrupting viewing patterns and distribution and
exhibition channels. However, it remains important to acknowledge how Amazon is
building its media empire on an existing entertainment infrastructure. In 2017, Amazon
1550 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

announced plans to purchase the historic Culver Studios. The fabled studio is a symbol
of Hollywood and has belonged to many illustrious figures in film and television history,
including Cecil B. DeMille, David O. Selznick, and Lucille Ball (Meares, 2019).
Additionally, Amazon Studios is operated by a team of renowned ex-Hollywood execu-
tives and industry veterans (Apello, 2017). The initial chief executive of Amazon Studios,
Roy Price, formerly oversaw Disney’s TV animation. Amazon Studios partners with
existing media companies to license content and create original programing. For exam-
ple, Amazon co-produced Chi-Raq with Lee’s 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks and part-
nered with Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate for distribution (Spangler, 2016a).
Amazon Studio’s team of ex-Hollywood executive and the company’s recent purchase of
Culver Studios demonstrate the company’s interest in harnessing the fabled image of
Hollywood as the entertainment capital of the world.
In addition to Amazon Studios and its online video streaming platforms, the third
spoke of Amazon’s media flywheel operations involves the sale and manufacture of digi-
tal media players (DMPs). Amazon manufactures and sells DMPs, including Fire Sticks
and Fire Cubes, as well as Smart devices equipped for streaming such as Fire TVs and
Fire Tablets. The rise of internet distributed film and television has generated competi-
tion over the ownership of the software and devices that make viewing possible.
Hesmondhalgh and Labato (2019) locate the streaming wars within a much older battle
over television hardware, including television set-top boxes from the cable era. Their
research demonstrates the way online film and television needs to be conceptualized as
an industry of competing ‘device ecologies’, defined as synergies of interrelated hard-
ware and software, rather than single competing platforms (Hesmondhalgh and Labato,
2019: 965). DMPs determine what content is prioritized and discoverable for the con-
sumer, and thus play a pivotal role in the flow of user data. According to an article in
Wired, Amazon entered the DMP business with the release of the Fire Stick in 2014
(Moynihan, 2014). The Fire Stick is a plug-in device that allows users to access stream-
ing services over the internet on the television. The Fire Stick functions as a portable
repository for user content. Users can plug into any TV with an HDMI port to connect to
the internet and access their personalized content.
As Kim et al. (2016) discuss, where the TV has historically been regarded as a ‘fam-
ily-oriented device’, Smart TV applications such as messaging, e-mail, and social net-
work services, illustrate how TV is increasingly imagined as a personal viewing device.
A Smart TV is defined as a television set with integrated internet and interactive features
that allow users to browse the web, as well as stream movies, television, music, and
games. While Samsung and other hardware manufacturers operate their own Smart TV
platforms, many Smart TVs, such as those made by Toshiba and Insignia, are powered
by Amazon’s Fire Operating System, the software that supports a Smart TV’s basic func-
tions. Amazon’s panoply of devices and software grant the company a competitive
advantage for their ability to accrue revenue and valuable consumer data.
DMPs generate revenue in a number of ways. Amazon gets a cut of the profit when-
ever a DMP or Smart device powered by Amazon software is sold online or in brick-and-
mortar retailers. However, DMPs also generate profits through subscription and
transaction revenue. DMPs can be compared to the tollbooth of the streaming highway.
If a viewer wants to stream Netflix, a cut of the profits will go to the DMP provider for
Klatt 1551

connecting the viewer to the streaming service. By expanding its ecosystem of DMPs
and software, Amazon can act as the intermediary of the streaming market. DMP provid-
ers charge streaming services for the sale of branded channel buttons on remote controls
and on the screen (Trefis Team, 2020). This has led, in turn, to the creation of what
Johnson (2020) has described as an economics of ‘prominence and discoverability’,
where DMPs sell access to platforms. The visual prominence of competing platforms can
influence consumer choice, prioritizing one or more services at the expense of others. In
2020, Amazon and Comcast battled over a licensing agreement because Comcast wanted
better real estate for its newly premiered streaming service, Peacock, on Amazon’s Fire
TV. An article in Vox explained that the main sticking point between Comcast and
Amazon was over which company would have direct contact with the viewer, as well as
access to their viewing habits and data (Kafka, 2020). The conflict between Comcast and
Amazon illustrates the significant role DMPs occupy in the streaming wars that deter-
mine what platforms viewers see and who has access to valuable user data.
Today, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates broadcast stations
and multichannel television. However, current law prevents the FCC from regulating
DMPs (O’Rielly, 2018). The FCC has rules to limit the potential for harmful interference
being caused to radio communications by computers and other products using digital tech-
nology, which includes video TV set-top boxes that stream internet content (Federal
Communications Commission, 2019). In addition, under the Video Accessibility Act of
2011, the FCC regulates accessibility features, including user interfaces, menus, and guides
for televisions and similar devices (Federal Communications Commission, 2021).
However, there are currently few legal restrictions in the US to prevent companies like
Amazon from using their status as a DMP provider to form a digital blockade against com-
petitors. According to data compiled in a report by the Congressional Research Service
(Cho, 2020), Amazon’s DMP market is one of the largest in the United States, second only
to Roku. The dependence of content creators and media companies on Fire hardware and
software continues to tip the flow of subscriptions and user data toward Amazon.
Amazon’s entrance into the DMP market illustrates the company’s intention to estab-
lish control of the distribution channels within the film and television industries of the
streaming era. By creating synergies between its hardware and software, Amazon will
continue to increase its negotiating power. DMPs have transformed the film and televi-
sion industries. However, the practice of ‘forced integration’ is not entirely new. Media
conglomerates are being haunted by strategies that they themselves perfected. As
Strangelove (2015) explains, in the cable era, providers often required small program-
mers to sell their companies’ equity just to get carried. Nevertheless, as the number of
‘cord-cutters’ continues to increase, cable providers are losing their bargaining power. As
film and television move toward the internet, DMP providers, like Amazon, will have the
upper hand in the new economy.
As film and television increasingly transition to internet distribution, it becomes all
the more important to consider the relationship between Amazon Studios and the com-
pany’s cloud computing service, Amazon Web Services (AWS). With a market share of
33% of the cloud computing industry, Amazon possesses a sizable portion of the global
internet infrastructure, granting the company a privileged position in the streaming mar-
ketplace (Runkevicius, 2020). AWS offers a broad range of evolving global cloud-based
1552 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

products from infrastructure technologies like computing power, storage, and databases
to services like AI, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (aws.amazon.com,
2021). In the past, a small business looking to expand and improve its computing would
purchase a server or servers to collect and send information across a network and power
workloads. AWS introduced a pay-as-you-go model offering customers instant, afforda-
ble, access to over 200 services across its global cloud infrastructure.
Amazons’ move into cloud computing echoes historic attempts of TV Natives’ to
monopolize broadcast and cable distribution networks. The cable industry relied on a
complex underground system of wires, and many of the cable operators, such as AT&T
and Comcast, were also major producers of television in that period. Nevertheless, within
data-based economies, the reliance of film and television distributors on AWS continues
to tip the flow of data toward Amazon, ensuring the company’s dominance of the stream-
ing market. Amazon launched AWS in 2006 (aws.amazon.com, 2021). By 2020, Herman
(2020) estimates that AWS accounted for more than 63% of Amazon’s total operating
profit, yielding roughly $13.5 billion. As Herman summarizes,

If you watch Netflix, that’s AWS. If you have a meeting on Zoom, there’s a good chance that’s
AWS, too. If you check Pinterest, that’s AWS. If you spend any time scrolling through Twitter,
well, AWS provides global cloud infrastructure to deliver Twitter timelines.

According to an article in The Washington Post, ‘more than half of the top 10,000 web-
sites – including The Post – are hosted by Amazon’ (Alcantara et al., 2021). Similarly,
Runkevicius (2020) estimates that Amazon owns nearly one-third of the public-cloud
infrastructure.
As it stands, there is limited federal regulation in the US to safeguard cloud services
like AWS from harvesting data, interfering with internet traffic, and establishing an over-
arching hegemony of the market. Competition law cannot address data because data has
no measurable market. Furthermore, consumer advantages associated with AWS, like
low prices, increased speed, and increased data capacity, make it difficult for antitrust
proceedings to prevail in court. Many organizations rely on AWS to function, making
politicians and regulators reluctant to antagonize the cloud computing giant.
Discussion of a fair and open Internet typically revolves around net neutrality.
However, the growing significance of AWS and other cloud computing services raise
serious concerns of cloud neutrality. The increasing importance of cloud computing
demands a more specific legal framework that addresses services like AWS. Streaming
services emerged at the center of the net-neutrality debate in 2013 when Comcast threat-
ened to charge Netflix a toll for its heavy internet usage (Davies, 2016). According to
Hastings, if Netflix refused to pay the traffic toll, Comcast threatened to deliberately
slow the transfer of its content, a move that would privilege competitors, argued Netflix.
At the time, Comcast did not operate a streaming service. However, in 2021, Comcast
has a stake in several major streaming service platforms, including Peacock, Vudu,
Xumo, and Xfinity. The result of the conflict was the 2015 FCC ruling that reclassified
broadband ISPs like Comcast as ‘telecommunications services’ under Title II of the
Telecommunications Act of 1996 (Davies, 2016). The ruling forbids broadband ISPs
Klatt 1553

from unreasonably interfering or disadvantaging a user’s ability to select or access con-

tent. In 2017, the Trump appointed chair of the FCC, Ajit Pai, and the Republican con-
trolled FCC voted to terminate the Obama era net neutrality laws in favor of deregulated
markets (Feiner, 2021).
Amazon’s entrance into cloud computing raises serious concerns for the media and
entertainment industry. While scholars have addressed the privacy problems associated
with large platforms within the information age, there has been little sustained attention
about the businesses that are responsible. As Van Loo (2019) summarizes, ‘An irony of
the information age is that the companies responsible for the most extensive surveillance
of individuals in history – are platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google – have
themselves remained unusually shielded from being monitored by government regula-
tors’ (p. 1563). AWS grants the corporation asymmetrical access to user data for their
own market interests. Increasingly, more content providers are turning to AWS. Hulu,
Netflix, and Xfinity are a few of the streaming platforms that rely on the AWS infrastruc-
ture to deliver content (aws.amazon.com, 2021). It is not clear what the precise relation-
ship is between AWS and the numerous sites that rely on its infrastructure concerning the
flow of data and user privacy. AWS and the cloud computing industry have an obligation
to communicate to consumers how their data is being used in perfectly clear terms. If we
are to create a diverse mediascape in the internet economy, it is vital that we devise laws
that can account for the way internet distribution, AI, platforms, and big data are reshap-
ing the film and television industries.

Conclusion
In this paper, I explored the advent of streaming services and the shifting business prac-
tices within the film and television industries through a case study of a leading streaming
platform, Prime Video. Since the 1990s, government-sanctioned conglomeration of
broadcast television, the motion picture industry, cable, and satellite resulted in a market
in which only a few large suppliers dominated the industry. However, new markets that
rely on the internet, AI, platforms, and big data have introduced new industry players,
like Amazon, that threaten the media conglomerates’ hold. As this article demonstrates,
Amazon’s success cannot be measured by looking at its film and television units in isola-
tion. Amazon relies on a multiplicity of verticals and horizontals, generating a massive
flywheel. The seemingly diverse markets flow into one another, generating maximum
profits while turning the wheel. By prioritizing growth over profitability, Amazon con-
tinues to expand its influence within the internet economy, maximizing its opportunities
to interact with users and harvest personal data to secure its market dominance.
Streaming technology made a revolutionary impact on the media landscape. At the
same time, Amazon’s business strategy reflects historical industry practices perfected by
the conglomerates of the cable era. While each of the companies maintains unique busi-
ness models and strategies, Amazon’s commitment to create synergies between its hard-
ware and software make it representative of the industry logic that governs film and
television history as a whole. Streaming services have radically reconfigured the indus-
try logics of production, distribution, and exhibition. At the same time, however, this
1554 Media, Culture & Society 44(8)

chapter demonstrates how the so-called ‘streaming wars’ are only the latest expression of
conglomeration within the motion picture and television industries.
If we are to possess a democratic mediascape in the future, one characterized by local-
ism and diverse, antagonistic sources, then it is critical that we investigate competition in
digital markets and develop a legal structure that encompasses the new technology. The
conglomerate ecosystem produced some of the most widespread, beloved films and tel-
evision shows, cultivating a powerful bond between the viewers and the companies that
created these stories and characters. Similarly, the services and technologies that Big
Tech companies provide in the internet age further cement consumer loyalty. Insisting on
accountability for the film and television industries in the streaming era means acknowl-
edging our dual roles as consumers and citizens. Acknowledging our role as citizens
means recognizing that meaningful media diversity in the age of streaming can only be
sustained through structural change that addresses head-on flywheel economics, con-
glomeration, and internet gatekeeping strategies. As big media grows even bigger, it is
imperative that we accurately historicize the narrative of disruption surrounding stream-
ing services. Streaming services have disrupted the film and television industries, esthetic
conventions, viewing habits, and processes of subject formation. However, whether the
new medium will disrupt the culture of conglomeration remains to be seen.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

ORCID iD
Tyler Klatt https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5822-5139

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