Amazon is reportedly looking into creating an online television service to stream channels by partnering with companies including CBS and Comcast, according to Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources.
While Amazon’s discussions are still in preliminary stages, according to the publication, some of the talks have been ongoing for months.
Frost & Sullivan analyst Dan Rayburn wrote on his blog StreamingMediaBlog that owners of some television channels were tapped by Amazon.
“Those I have spoken with haven’t disclosed how far along Amazon is with regards to a live OTT service,” Rayburn wrote in the post. “It’s possible Amazon is simply looking at the economics of the business, which would involve them talking with content owners about costs.”
“But what makes this Amazon story even more interesting is that Amazon recently agreed to acquire Elemental Technologies, a company that offers a cloud-based platform for ingesting, encoding, protecting and packaging live linear streams,” Rayburn added. “While Amazon has already confirmed they plan to integrate Elemental’s live linear platform into their AWS platform and offer it as a service, acquiring Elemental will also give Amazon their own in-house platform needed to make an Amazon branded live OTT service possible.”
The potential move comes as Amazon has bolstered its offerings in the entertainment space in recent years, such as its acquisition of Elemental. It offers on-demand television shows and movies under its Prime Instant Video service.
For more on Amazon, Fortune delved into Amazon Prime in February.
