The streamer has come out to deny rumours that the Freevee platform is to end.
AdWeek, a well-respected American trade journal for the advertising industry today lead with a report that Amazon was planning to shut down the Amazon Freevee brand and incorporate the free-with-ads content into their Amazon Prime Video service.
Whilst the headline was catchy and fans who didn’t read beyond those headlines panicked at the prospect of losing Neighbours once again, the beef of the story was that the Freevee brand was reported to be going, along with the stand-alone app and all content (including Neighbours) would be absorbed into the main Amazon Prime app on a free, non-subscription tier.
However, seeing the AdWeek article gain traction and be picked up by a number of media outlets (Including ourselves) in the USA, UK and beyond, Amazon released a statement denying that there were any changes.
“There are no changes to Freevee. Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows and Originals, all for free.”
Of course, such a denial doesn’t mean that the change WON’T happen… it just means it isn’t happening right now. Businesses, especially mammoth corporations such as Amazon will have finely tuned communications plans around any such news, ensuring any announcement is made at the perfect time. So for now, at least, Freevee is here to stay.
If Amazon did choose to have all of their free content only in the main Prime Video app, it wouldn’t be a huge transition for many fans. Speaking on social media, a number of fans commented how they watch Neighbours already through the Prime Video app. The Freevee app is only available on a limited number of platforms, mainly Apple and Amazon Fire devices and others commented on how much more difficult the Freevee app is to navigate than the main Prime Video app.
We are sure that every Neighbours fan has had to try and explain to a friend or family member what Freevee is, so saying it is on Prime Video would be a lot easier.
So, we are not ready to say farewell to the bright green branding and that catchy Freevee jingle that plays before every episode JUST yet, but in the ever-changing world of multi-channel broadcasting, we are sure there will be changes ahead on how we consume our daily does of sunshine from Erinsborough.