CBS, Amazon Extend Streaming Pact

CBS and Amazon said they have expanded their licensing agreement to include three upcoming summer series through 2018, starting with the comedy Braindead. The agreement had made CBS series Under The Dome and Extant available to Amazon Prime Video customers four days after they air on CBS. The expanded agreement also add more CBS and Showtime library series and films to Amazon Prime Video.

Braindead is a comic thriller from The Good Wife producers Robert and Michelle King, set in Washington, D.C., starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and involving aliens eating the brains of Congressmen and Hill staffers. 

“Prime members have loved having access to series like Under The Dome and Extant just four days after broadcast, and we’re excited to continue to offer in-season availability of more great CBS summer series over the next three years,” Brad Beale, Amazon vice president of digital video content acquisition, said in a release. “We are also always working to ensure our Prime members have the best selection, and we know they will continue to enjoy unlimited access to a wide array of CBS titles to binge-watch anytime, anywhere.”  


“We’re thrilled to build on our relationship with Amazon with new original summer series and more programming from CBS and Showtime,” Scott Koondel, chief corporate licensing officer for CBS, said in the release. “With a truly original, genre-bending concept from outstanding creative auspices, Braindead will be one of the most talked-about shows next summer by CBS viewers and Prime members.”

CBS and Showtime fare coming to Prime Video includes Medium, The Tudors, The L Word, the original Twin Peaks series, America's Next Top Model, I Love Lucy, Penn & Teller, The Amazing Race, MacGyver, Brotherhood and Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. CBS Films titles available for Prime members include Inside Llewyn Davis and Prime, the companies said. 

Kent Gibbons

Kent has been a journalist, writer and editor at Multichannel News since 1994 and with Broadcasting+Cable since 2010. He is a good point of contact for anything editorial at the publications and for Nexttv.com. Before joining Multichannel News he had been a newspaper reporter with publications including The Washington Times, The Poughkeepsie (N.Y.) Journal and North County News.