Media

Amazon Offers State of the Union Video a Day Late

Douglas A. McIntyre

Published: January 11, 2016 6:47 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 3:13 pm

Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) will offer streaming versions of President Obama’s State of the Union Address. Oddly, the video will be available a day after the event. The speech is scheduled for 9 p.m. Tuesday. As for Amazon:

For the first time, this year SOTU will be available to stream on-demand on Amazon Video, in addition to on wh.gov/sotu and our YouTube channel. And beginning Wednesday through the end of the week, Amazon will make the speech available across all devices for Americans to watch the State of the Union in the same way we’re used to consuming video content in 2016. So, for those who’ve cut the cord from cable and network TV: Whether you use a smart TV, web browser, mobile device, or tablet there’s a way for you to watch the President’s speech as it happens and on-demand.

With its extraordinary resources, Amazon could offer an unprecedented showcase for the power of video over the Internet. Instead, it will be available the next day.
[ims_survey]
The promise of streaming is not just that it will allow people to watch video across all devices. Neither is it the ability to cancel cable, satellite and fiber subscription bundles of content. Live streaming of events and news is the only way to directly and completely compete with cable. And that process already has begun with projects like the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) live streaming of an NFL game from London. Even if the Yahoo effort was not an unqualified success, it was a step forward, and a major one, in terms of the advancement of live streaming to match all the abilities of traditional cable. A tip of the hat to both the portal and NFL.

Amazon Prime (which people do not need to pay for to watch Amazon’s State of the Union video), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX) have, among them, tens of millions of customers. It is time they give people a complete product.