Amazon Prime Video is coming after TikTok with the addition of short-form news clips. The company said on Monday that it’s expanding its news coverage to include on-demand news clips offering both local and national stories. These will be available on TVs and other living room devices, but will soon roll out to the web and Prime Video’s mobile apps, the company said.
The clips will be available in the News destination within the Prime Video app in its Trending Topics and the Local News carousels. They join Prime Video’s existing local, national, and world news coverage from a number of major providers, which are available to everyone in the U.S. regardless of whether they have a Prime subscription.
Amazon could not yet confirm whether the clips on mobile would be oriented for vertical video or not, only that they would be considered short-form content on iOS and Android.
While TikTok is better known as an entertainment destination, it’s also, along with Instagram, increasingly a place where younger people get their news. Gen Z in particular often watches news creators and influencers on short-form apps, including YouTube Shorts. Amazon, which doesn’t have a true social destination of its own, is instead adding short-form video to Prime Video, in hopes of capturing Gen Z’s attention.
But Gen Z viewers are drawn to these social apps not necessarily because of the length of the clips, but rather because of how the information is presented. Based on findings from Pew Research, these younger news consumers want short-form news content that “feels organic, not over-produced.”
Prime Video is not the first streamer to add short-form clips to its content lineup. Peacock added support for short-form clips in March, followed by HBO Max and Netflix in July, then Disney+ in August. Combined, the updates represent an industrywide effort to meet viewers where they are — which is now often looking for entertainment in shorter bursts and consumable in moments or minutes instead of portions of hours or longer.
