Amazon is denying a report in Adweek that it plans to shut down Freevee, its ad-supported free television application, in the coming months.
The report by media reporter Mark Stenberg, citing two unnamed people, claimed the company plans to sunset the service in the near future to focus its advertising efforts on Prime Video, which added commercials to its base membership level in January. Adweek said that was likely to happen before late April, when Amazon will give advertisers a look at upcoming programming In the NewFronts event.
Amazon, however, said the story is inaccurate—in the present tense, at least.
“There are no changes to Freevee,” an Amazon spokesperson told Fortune. “Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows, and Originals, all for free.”
Freevee was formerly known as IMDb TV, but Amazon purchased the service and renamed in April 2022. It’s one of several free ad-supported streaming television (dubbed FAST by industry insiders) and competitors include Sling TV’s Freestream, Fox’s Tubi and Pluto TV. FAST channels have become increasingly popular with people who are fed up with escalating cable TV and streaming service rates.
Pluto TV, for instance, aims to have 120 million users by the end of this year.
Freevee has not only benefitted from Amazon’s original programming for the service, it also has licensing agreements with Disney Media and Entertainment—and a previous deal with NBCU gave it the exclusive network window for films from the 2020-21 slate of Universal.
Freevee saw it staff reduced earlier this year, when Amazon laid off hundreds of workers in its Prime Video and MGM Studios divisions.
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