The most recent Academy Awards show was the lowest rated in a decade, and it got 26 million people in what's called "live plus same day" which includes for people watching on their DVR's shortly after.

That's 26 million people in just a few hours for one show in one country. Amazon's five million came from 19 shows, "airing" across an entire year, in however many countries have Amazon Video.

If you were to break it down by same-day viewership, Amazon's ratings are lower than a local news show in a very small market.

I'm not criticizing Amazon, at all. I'm a paying subscriber and think it, Netflix, and similar services are a better vision of the future than what the broadcast and cable nets have put together. But it's way too early to tout the death of the broadcast industry, as so many like to do.

Also, The Grand Tour is awesome.

To me these numbers show that Amazon have managed to compete reasonably favourably with the BBC, which is famous for being really good at making TV shows, within 5 years of starting to make their own content, they've built a platform that people are willing to use to watch that content, and they've developed a model that audiences are willing to pay for. That's huge.

Slightly OT: YouTube will be big in „live plus same day“ this year. Boxing match of KSI vs Joe Weller [1] drew 1.6 million live viewers and 16 Million on the (official) released video after. I'd estimate the announced fight of KSI vs Logan Paul in August to yield closer to 5 or up to 10 million live viewers with a massive „same day watching“ after.

Sure the content is not for everyone but might be a glimpse at what a younger generation prefers.

[1] https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5498574/youtube-stars-boxing-k...

The Netflix app on my smart TV honors that setting. Unfortunately, this setting does not stop Netflix from auto-playing the video when you first select it.

This and the parent comment lend themselves to a bigger concern of mine: services not always owning the UX. Either the services have to design multiple apps leading to the kind of inconsistencies that arise naturally from that or the devices have to use some API against whatever UI they happen to support.

Basically, you have to re-learn these services depending on where you're playing them. I feel like Netflix has locked it down a bit but there's always smart TVs, media players, etc. that will never uniformly support a single UX for any given service.

Really? In amazon's case they auto play the next episode, so given that the user statyed up through the entire episode, that means they probably like that series and so like the next episode.

Also I find YouTube autoplays to be more often than not to be enjoyable by me. And I discover new stuff I like that I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

BBC handed Amazon a win on a silver platter. They didn't need a writer, they didn't need a producer, they just bought the ones that BBC threw out. How did Netflix miss on Andy Wilman and Jeremy Clarkson?

Their hand was forced. Clarkson punched someone. They can’t just countenance physical violence because it’s a successful show. That would have had serious ramifications (rightfully so).

For all intents and purposes: Clarkson left. He gambled, and won. But it was a gambit, and I doubt Amazon execs will be keen on taking hits themselves. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some circumspect wording in the contracts related to covering exactly that case :)

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/top-gear-2017-ratings-...

[Edit - this is for the 2017 series]

It really does show as well. Some scenes in season one and two could never have been shown on the BBC.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fky8c

Seems very, very unlikely that Amazon would be canceling a show with those circumstances.

I could see the crew deciding to retire/stop doing the show, but I can't see Amazon canceling it.

I used to be a big TG fan but didn't even finish this season. A lot of my friends used to be TG fans, and they've also quit watching.

It's not too hard to believe that the C/H/M formula has run its course for a lot more people than just my small sphere of friends.

BBC had to toss Clarkson after he punched a producer.

If you haven't already watched it, I'd highly recommend Season 1 and 2 of "The Expanse" on Prime. There are a lot of pretty great shows on there as long as you don't rely on DC/Marvel shows for all your entertainment. Other shows that are reasonably acclaimed are:

- The Man in the High Castle

- Avatar: The Last Airbender

- The Nightmanager

- Mr. Robot

- Boardwalk Empire

- Downton Abbey

- Sneaky Pete

- Orphan Black

- Dr. Who

- Veep

- The Good Wife

- Transparent

- Hannibal

- Deadwood

- Curb your Enthusiasm

- The Wire

- Six Feet Under

- The Sopranos

Of the others the only two I hadn't watched a long time ago (e.g. Sopranos) that I would consider really good are Mr. Robot & Boardwalk Empire, both of which I had already watched elsewhere. What I like about Netflix is their originals are top notch.

The HBO shows are gone sometime in 2018 I believe, at least the contract is up soon and HBO said they're keeping the shows to HBO Now instead AFAIK.

They're doing a good job with their original content efforts, but I don't know if it'll be enough content quickly enough.

Great for my multi-lingual family. I almost don't care what the content is (well as long as it's appropriate) as long as they're getting immersion while watching.

I personally don't like Prime shows other than Man in the High Castle. And they are increasingly pushing down other New Releases so you only see Prime shows above the fold on TV devices (Roku etc). But I understand they are playing the long game here and quality will probably improve. I used to dislike most of Netflix original shows, but now theres a steady lineup that I could watch regularly every week.

I see topX lists as "what studios want you to listen to". Only Spotify's discover weekly seems interesting at all.