Amazon Prime is the USA’s SVoD TV Show market leader
Amazon Prime Video more than doubled the number of TV Shows offered to US subscribers between May 2017 and May 2018. It has the largest TV catalogue of any SVoD operator in the USA with 1,833 individual TV show titles in recorded in May 2018.
TV shows are a key area of competition for SVoD operators,
encouraging greater engagement from existing and new subscribers. However, the
proportion of Amazon subscribers using Prime Video has been in decline in the
USA since Q1 2016. The dramatic increase in the volume of titles and the company’s
big public investments in TV production, typified by the LOTR series, is
clearly seeking to address the challenges Amazon is facing with competition for
from the plethora of other services in the market – and the ensuing
disengagement with its video offer.
However, Amazon’s catalogue growth has come at the cost of
quality. Compared to the same time last year, of titles that had been
rated by consumers, 33% of Amazon’s catalogue now carry a quality rating of 'Poor' or 'Average' whereas this ratio was just 27% in May 2017. The number of 'Good' shows has increased marginally as a proportion from 24% to 26%. It is Amazon’s 'Excellent' titles
that currently account for a smaller proportion of the catalogue at 41%, down from 49% a year ago. Even
so, in absolute volumes terms, because of the growth of the catalogue overall,
the number of 'Excellent' titles on Amazon has grown 60% over the last 12 months.
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