Amazon’s Prime Video is rolling out a new feature that will allow streamers to watch clips from local and national television broadcasts, the company announced on Monday.
The feature, called News Clips, will appear within Prime Video’s News destination under Trending Topics and Local News, giving viewers a way to quickly catch up on major stories from multiple news providers, Amazon said.
News Clips is rolling out on Amazon’s own smart TVs powered by Fire TV and Vega OS first, and will eventually make its way to other platforms, including Prime Video for phones and tablets.
Amazon has not said whether the mobile version will use vertical video, though the company characterized the offering as short-form content.
“With News Clips, customers have a quick and easy way to get caught up on the latest stories happening in their neighborhood and around the world,” Prime Video Head of Global App Experiences Brian Griffin said in a statement on Monday. “Combined with our extensive lineup of free 24/7 live news, Prime Video is becoming a truly comprehensive destination for news.”
Prime Video offers national news from broadcasters like ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, Scripps News and Nexstar’s The Hill, along with local news feeds from the CBS, NBC, Telemundo, Fox Television Stations, the E. W. Scripps Company, Hearst Television, Sinclair and others.
The addition comes as streaming services increasingly experiment with shorter video formats. Peacock added short-form clips earlier this year, followed by HBO Max and Netflix, while Disney Plus introduced a similar feature in August.
For broadcasters, News Clips could offer a pathway to drawing viewers into more-traditional news programming offered by their stations, including half-hour and hour-long newscasts that air throughout the day, at a time when much of the industry is working to address a downturn in audience and related advertising revenue.
