Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
It was smack dab in the middle of Masterpiece’s Fall 2017 Schedule. It was wedged between the return of the swashbuckling soap opera Poldark and Season 2 of The Durrells in Corfu. At first glance, there was nothing “off” about PBS adding The Collection to its Fall Masterpiece line up. It’s a glamorous drama with an international cast that zeroes in on a Parisian fashion house mired in scandal in the years following World War II. It makes sense as a Masterpiece series.
But The Collection was already an Amazon series. The internationally-produced series first came to the Unites States this spring and it has been streaming on Prime Video since then.
When The Collection debuts on Masterpiece on October 8 at 10 PM, it will be silently marking a new era in Amazon’s relationship with the prestige drama showcase. Amazon has made no secret of the fact that it wants to be the streaming home for as many Masterpiece series as possible. Over the past few years, the internet giant has snatched up as many SVOD rights to Masterpiece titles as they could — and they already offer a curated “Masterpiece” Amazon channel that gives subscribers access to 31 additional titles not (yet) available to Prime Subscribers. But what PBS and Masterpiece is doing with The Collection is different. This was Masterpiece’s official statement:
The Collection first began as an Amazon Studios UK/Lookout Point production. Then Masterpiece on PBS came on board as a co-producer for the show’s release in the US.
PBS has had a long-standing relationship with Amazon for distribution of Masterpiece titles, The Collection is the first Masterpiece co-production with Amazon Studios and Lookout Point. Masterpiece is always looking for new ways to provide quality programming to our viewers; we took the opportunity to co-produce The Collection because its drama, location, romance, and gorgeous costumes makes the series a perfect fit for the Masterpiece audience.
The bottom line is that Masterpiece’s relationship with Amazon is only deepening. Amazon is no longer building out its own Prime Video library with Masterpiece titles; Masterpiece is getting its own programming content from Amazon. Though it’s true that The Collection could be both the first and last co-production between Amazon Studios and Masterpiece, the deal itself blurs the lines between an already tight streaming relationship. It’s a business relationship that says a lot about the history of streaming so far, and what may be yet to come for the increasingly blurred lines between streaming and traditional broadcast television.
Amazon’s Not-So-Surprising Courtship Of PBS
Masterpiece‘s reputation as a home for period dramas often betrays its pioneering spirit. Launched as Masterpiece Theatre in 1971, it was one of the first places on American television that was dedicated to showcasing the best in foreign — in this case, British — entertainment. Masterpiece Theatre‘s most beloved productions ranged from the epic historical dramas like I, Claudius (a show that would pave the way for the likes of Rome, and by extension, Game of Thrones), to contemporary dramas like the original House of Cards, to edgy, ground-breaking thrillers like Prime Suspect. These programs all helped set the stage for the type of entertainment that would burn its way across streaming platforms in the early 2010s: addictive political soap operas, seedy murder mysteries, and foreign dramas.
In the last decade, Masterpiece Theatre has evolved to reflect the changing times. It rebranded itself as just “Masterpiece” in 2008 and by 2010 had claimed a brand new, zeitgeist-grabbing hit: Downton Abbey. In 2012, it was reported that Season 2 of Downton Abbey wasn’t just a broadcast hit for PBS, but a streaming hit. Reuters reported that Season 2’s initial broadcast drew in an average of 5.4 million traditional viewers. That same season received around 4.8 million views on PBS’s digital platform, a rating which was up a whopping 400% from the digital views for Season 1. All in all, it was reported that Downton Abbey-related content accounted for more than 9 million streams across all platforms between the second season’s January 8, 2012 premiere and February 23, 2012. Meaning, it was a pretty big digital hit for then.
Digital streaming platforms are notoriously stingy when it comes to releasing ratings, but if you want an idea of how exponentially fast PBS’s digital streaming business was growing, you can compare these 2012 numbers with what the company itself reported in 2015. Back then, PBS’s internal blog addressed concerns viewers had with its free online offerings. In the post, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler revealed that each month, PBS was streaming over 300 million free online videos to 16 million monthly visitors. And that’s not counting how many people were streaming PBS content on other streaming services.
Amazon first launched its own online streaming service in 2006, but in 2011, it relaunched the service as Amazon Instant Video. The new version service included a bonus for Prime Subscribers called “Prime Instant Video.” The former was an easy-to-use digital marketplace to buy and rent video on demand, and the latter was hailed as a direct response to Netflix, “Hulu Plus,” and other emerging streaming services. At the time, Amazon offered a few thousand film and TV titles with its “Prime Instant Video” service. It’s hard to know exactly what these titles were then (since Decider didn’t yet exist), but Mashable has a report that repeatedly singles out PBS as one of the largest sources of this “free” content.
Amazon wasn’t the only streaming service after PBS and Masterpiece‘s library. In early 2014, Netflix had cut a deal to be the streaming home for Masterpiece Mystery hit Sherlock. At the time, Netflix also had the rights to a number of other popular British series, including Doctor Who (which was also available on Hulu). However, in the last few years, Amazon has deftly tried to scoop up as much of PBS’s British TV empire as possible. In February 2013, a solid year after PBS initially reported that Downton Abbey Season Two was a streaming hit for them, Amazon secured the exclusive streaming rights to the whole series. As previously mentioned, they cut a deal in 2015 for the SVOD rights for future Masterpiece titles, and in 2016, PBS announced that Amazon would be the exclusive streaming partner to PBS Kids (which is not exclusively “British” nor under the Masterpiece umbrella, but it’s still noteworthy). Also in early 2016? Amazon nabbed the exclusive streaming rights to Doctor Who, thus snatching the rights to the uber-popular show from competitors Netflix and Hulu.
So is Amazon essentially the “PBS platform” now? Not so fast. There’s still one hiccup there and its PBS’s own streaming service.
Amazon’s Masterpiece Channel vs. PBS Passport
With platforms, channels, studios, and production houses playing tug of war with the streaming rights to thousands of beloved titles, the world of streaming is often likened to the Wild West. My colleague Brett White jokingly refers to the period of time we’re in now as the “Great Land Grab” for SVOD rights. While Amazon has managed to claim a vast majority of popular Masterpiece titles for their Prime subscribers, many favorites have slipped through the cracks.
To fill in these gaps in their own Prime library, Amazon offers a “Masterpiece Channel.” For $5.99 per month, users can add this option to their pre-existing Prime subscription, thus giving them access to more Masterpiece favorites. The channel offers older classics like The Jewel in the Crown and Mansfield Park, but more importantly, it gives users access to the latest seasons of Masterpiece‘s featured shows. For example, Grantchester Season 3 only just wrapped on PBS a few weeks ago, so it won’t be available free of charge to Prime members for a while yet. But Masterpiece Channel subscribers can stream it now with their Amazon Channel add-on. Right now, Masterpiece Channel offers users 31 titles to stream.
It’s a pretty good deal, but PBS has one of their own. PBS’s basic streaming platform is free to use (and comes with more than a handful Viking River Cruise commercials). They tend to offer free streaming of the network’s latest titles for anywhere from a few weeks to months after broadcast. PBS also offers its own subscription service for viewers who want unlimited access to new and favorite programs.
PBS is far from the only network to have its own personalized streaming service in addition to SVOD deals with other streaming services. However, PBS is the one major network whose livelihood depends upon federal grants and contributions from viewers like you. Oh, and corporate donations, too.
What Is Masterpiece‘s Future With Amazon?
Circling back to The Collection, now that Masterpiece is co-producing projects with Amazon Studios, the relationship between the two entities seems more blurred than ever. Amazon hadn’t responded to our requests for comment before publication, but these deals suggest that Amazon has plans to work closer and closer with the Masterpiece team in the years ahead. Last year, HBO took over the rights of a different PBS gem, Sesame Street. The acquisition was almost explicitly made to boost HBO’s children’s programming on its digital platforms. Could there be a future where Masterpiece’s main corporate underwriter is none other than Amazon?
Some romantics might bemoan this turn of events, but they would forget that Masterpiece Theatre launched in the first place with a healthy loan from Exxon. Corporate donations have long kept public broadcasting endeavors alive, and in a political landscape where PBS’s federal funding is up in the air, getting cozier and cozier with a business behemoth like Amazon might be Masterpiece’s own form of “buccaneering.”
Ironically, Amazon might see a closer relationship with Masterpiece as even more beneficial than Masterpiece might. When I logged onto Amazon Video’s homepage yesterday, PBS and Masterpiece titles accounted for almost half the featured titles advertised. Titles like Victoria, The Crimson Field, Endeavor, Poldark, Grantchester, and The Tunnel were prominently listed next to Amazon’s own originals and the best that HBO and Starz had to offer. On InstantWatcher, an unofficial feed of popular user picks, PBS titles account for the bulk of the trending shows on Prime Video. Amazon customers seem to really like PBS programming, so maybe Amazon has more to gain from a deal with Masterpiece.
All of this is conjecture, though. After all, this is the “Great Land Grab” of SVOD rights. Just because Amazon seems to be courting Masterpiece hard doesn’t mean another investor won’t sweep in to claim PBS’s crown programming jewels. Until then, Masterpiece fans have a plethora of ways to stream their favorite sumptuous shows and features. Time will tell how long those options will last.
