I live in Canada and our household subscribes to both Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Occasionally I notice that a show is available for streaming on both services, which I find a bit surprising. For instance, I could watch Archer on either service right now. And I remember when I watched Schitt’s Creek during the lockdown, I could watch it on Netflix, Prime Video or on the CBC’s own streaming service Gem!
Is this something that happens in the U.S. as well? Wouldn’t it make more sense to pay for an exclusive license to stream a show instead, or would it be prohibitively expensive?
Look at it from another point of view: Wouldn’t it make more sense to sell a license to stream a show to as many services as possible, unless you’d get more money from just one exclusive license?
I can’t think of any offhand that are on both Netflix and Prime Video - but I’ve seen shows on both Hulu and the Roku channel or Hulu and Paramount or Netflix and Apple TV and those are just the ones I can think of offhand. I’m sure there are more.
The answer’s yes. On the regular Netflix and Amazon Prime.
So I always think "Do I want Amazon’s X-Ray feature (to check out which actor looks soooo familiar that I can’t keep watching, but just have to check)?
Ahh, but what I’m watching on A-Prime comes up on the home page of our Fire TV, and the family’ll know I was bingeing some YA action series: “Do we want to continue watching… Paper Girls? Teen Wolf? Daaad…!”
And one of the two has subtitles that you can control the size of the font. I like 'em small, so I don’t notice the text… until someone starts whispering.