In a surprising reveal at CES 2016 keynote, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings announced that Netflix was rolling out globally bring its Internet TV network to more than 130-countries around the world. The streaming service was previously available in parts of the Americas, parts of Europe and South East Asia. Since its global expansion, Netflix has added thousands of users besides allowing millions of others to access its content.
E-commerce retailer Amazon has had its video streaming service out for a while and has been looking to create original content for the service. The service, Amazon Prime Video has also been slowly expanding and has now hinted at a major global expansion. Amazon Prime Video is presently only available in five countries — the U.S., UK, Germany, Austria and Japan. According to Tech Crunch, the service has hinted it will expand to cover 200 markets worldwide from December.
Late last year, BBC lost the presenters of one of the most popular motoring shows Top Gear. This was owing to an altercation that took place between one of the hosts and the show’s producers. Following the exit, a bidding war emerged among various networks and even streaming services each looking to create a motoring show. From Amazon to Netflix, Sky to ITV, each sought to acquire the services of the former Top Gear hosts. Amazon won the bidding war and channeled $250 Million towards the creation of a new motoring show aptly called The Grand Tour. The Grand Tour is set to premier today November 18th and the launch by Amazon is meant to capitalize on the popularity of the show.
The Grand Tour rolled out on Amazon Prime in the five markets yesterday and is set to go global in December according to a tweet by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. The move by Amazon is certainly as Amazon Prime is cheaper than Netflix (about Kshs. 10,000 a year), and offer free unlimited streaming content, prime music (unlimited access to music), prime photos (unlimited storage of photos), prime reading (borrow books and magazines) as well as membership sharing.
Long wait is over… Clarkson, Hammond, May are back… #TheGrandTour premieres tonight in UK, US, DE, JP. And globally in Dec. pic.twitter.com/dfQjGGuDFW
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) November 17, 2016
