Amazon Studios Orders Up Six Original Pilots: Is This The New TV Landscape?

Well, it's time to start mentioning "Amazon" in the same breath as HBO and Netflix. While the company once did little beyond ship a myriad items from random warehouses to customers across the globe, lately it has been dabbling in far more. There's the Kindle line of hardware, of course, but then there's the video service, which is slowly but surely becoming a force in the industry. Now, Amazon's Studio branch has ordered six original comedy pilots for its Prime Instant Video service, which is no small feat. The release states that we'll see an original series created by a mix of Emmy-winning writers, Academy Award nominees, TV stars, as well as newcomers discovered through Amazon Studios' open-door development process. Plus, Amazon will be watching the response to each of them in order to determine which of the six will go into full-season production.

Once the six pilots are completed, they will be posted on Amazon Instant Video for Amazon customers to watch for free. Viewer feedback will help determine which series Amazon Studios should produce. Completed seasons will be exclusively available to Prime members through Prime Instant Video and LOVEFiLM in the UK for free.

"Since launching our original series development effort, we have received more than 2,000 series ideas from creators around the world with all different backgrounds, and we are extremely excited to begin production on our very first set of pilots," said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. "The six comedy pilots will begin production shortly, and once they are complete, we plan to post the pilots on Amazon Instant Video for feedback. We want Amazon customers to help us decide which original series we should produce."

So, now that Amazon's shaping up to be a full-on force in the streaming video department, seeing YouTube's original content efforts makes a lot more sense. Welcome to the new media landscape.