Amazon Open for Pushing Content Through Cable

Amazon, the e-commerce giant that’s shaking up the entertainment industry, says it’s open to pursuing deals to stream content through cable operators’ set-top boxes, much like Netflix has done in the U.S. and Europe, according to Bloomberg.

“Amazon is definitely open to those partnerships and to be fair, we haven’t done as much there as Netflix have done,“ Alex Green, managing director of Amazon Video, said at the Cable Congress conference in Brussels. So far, Amazon has been more focused on growing its customers and building its own devices, he said. But “we do talk to all sorts of players in the cable industry.“

Amazon, which won its first Academy Awards last month for movies “Manchester by the Sea,“ and “The Salesman,“ is challenging pay-TV providers and video-game developers as the company expands beyond its online retail roots with growing media ambitions. The rise of internet-based subscription services from the likes of Amazon Prime, Netflix, and YouTube, have stoked analyst predictions that consumers will increasingly ditch cable and kill traditional TV.

Liberty Global, billionaire John Malone’s Europe-focused cable company, may be one operator to bring Amazon Prime onto its set-top boxes, which already offer more than 100 applications including for Netflix, YouTube and Videoland. Liberty last year agreed to expand a deal with Netflix in the U.K. to its other markets, and is evaluating whether to offer Amazon’s video service, said Eric Tveter, chief executive officer of Liberty’s Central Europe unit, earlier at the conference, according to a report by Digitaltveurope.