Today Amazon announced the launch of Fire TV Channels, a free live TV service that will work similar to Pluto TV and The Roku Channel. This service will launch in the summer of 2023 and will offer 400 content partners bringing live channels to the Fire TV.
Amazon already has free content on the Fire TV in the free content section. Starting this summer, this new Fire TV Channels destination will roll out to Fire TV devices putting content from 400 content partners in a single place on the Fire TV home screen with an easy-to-browse section.
Amazon Fire TV already has many of these partners live, including ABC News, CBS Sports HQ, FOX Sports, Major League Baseball, NBC News Now, America’s Test Kitchen, and Martha Stewart Living added to the new Fire TV free section. New publishing partners and content will be frequently added leading up to the Fire TV Channels launch this summer.
“With the launch of Fire TV Channels, we’re doubling down on our free ad-supported TV (FAST) experience–which already includes News, Sports, Food & Cooking, Music Videos, Trailers, Gaming Videos, and Comedy. In the past six months alone, monthly hours streamed of this content has grown by 300%. When our customers love something, we invest in creating more ways to surprise and delight them,” said Charlotte Maines, director of Fire TV advertising, monetization, and engagement. “Fire TV is breaking barriers by living up to the ‘smart’ in ‘smart TV.’ With Fire TV Channels, we’re delivering a simple, category-based experience that makes it easy to discover what you want to watch while constantly expanding content offerings.”
The service will include live content, linear content, and video-on-demand.
This service will be ad-supported and will build off of the success of Amazon Freevee. No word yet on if Amazon will make these new Fire TV Channels exclusive to Fire TV devices or if Amazon will build this into the Freevee app for all of its supported devices. For now, Amazon says this new Fire TV Channels section will be exclusive to Fire TV devices.
Free ad-supported services are some of the fastest-growing areas in cord cutting. Now it seems Amazon wants a more significant part of this market by expanding its efforts to offer free ad-supported content.
Update/Correction: We updated the story to make it clear that Amazon’s new Fire TV Channels section will have content from 400 partners, not 400 live channels.