It seems that the rumors of Freevee’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
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On Wednesday morning, AdWeek reported that Amazon was preparing to shutter its FAST (Free Ad-Supported Television) service, Freevee. The report said:
Amazon Prime Video ousts Freevee. The tech giant plans to close the free, ad-supported TV application in the coming weeks, probably ahead of NewFronts, so that it’s only shipping one ad-supported app, Mark Stenberg scoops.
The writing has been on the wall for Freevee since before Prime Video’s ad-tier arrival. Seems like Prime has always been the most effective Trojan Horse in moving people through Amazon’s system. Stay tuned for more reporting coming on these developments.
Following up on this news, Amazon released a statement to multiple outlets saying, “There are no changes to Freevee. Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows, and originals, all for free.”
There has been chatter in the industry since Amazon added advertising to Prime Video that Freevee no longer made quite as much sense for the company. The primary difference is that you must subscribe to Prime to even access its shows, whereas Freevee is available to anyone.
With FAST becoming the new normal for many people, the shuttering of Freevee seems unlikely. Amazon has been attempting to reduce costs, but a service that anyone can watch, and has been gaining some heat of its own in the past year or so, doesn’t seem like the wisest of plans.
