Amazon Reportedly Plans to Add Free Live TV to IMDb TV to Take on Pluto TV & The Roku Channel

Amazon is putting more resources toward its free, ad-supported IMDb TV streaming service. The company now offering to pay upfront licensing fees to make exclusive content available on IMDb TV. Amazon is also reportedly looking at adding live channels to IMDb TV in order to compete with The Roku Channel and Pluto TV.

According to sources for the Wall Street Journal, Amazon contacted Vice Media about the possibility of bringing “Vice News Tonight” to the streaming service. The half hour news program was cancelled by HBO in June.

Amazon is interested in bringing linear channels to IMDb TV as well, according to those sources. Like another free streaming service, Pluto TV, these linear channels would focus on one genre and would have a continuous stream of programming. Amazon is reportedly in talks with studios and TV producers to provide content for those channels, as well creating dedicated channels.

IMDb TV launched in January this year, then called IMDb Freedive. Amazon made IMDb TV available for iOS and Android devices on August 26^th, giving mobile users access to the library of thousands of movies and TV episodes for free.

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