Amazon just announced a new customization feature for its Amazon Fire TV OS that lets users build their own live-TV channel guide based on select services available in their aggregate free and subscription service portfolio.
Within the "guide" section of Fire TV's "live" top-line menu selection, there's a new menu item, "add channels," that lets users thumb through all the "live, linear" programming selections available within their accessible vMVPD, SVOD, AVOD and FAST service portfolio.
Here's an explainer from Amazon that better shows how it all works:
By pressing the "guide" button on our Amazon Fire TV remote, we were taken directly to our live linear program guide, which already had our Sling TV subscription integrated into our linear guide, as well as Fire TV News and IMDb TV. (Notably, we can hide the first two selections, but Amazon's free, ad-supported IMDb TV doesn't give you the option to hide its channels.)
The "add channels" feature gives us the option to add live linear channels from Hulu, YouTube TV, Philo, Discovery Plus, Fox Now, Amazon Prime Video, Pluto TV, Plex, Tubi and Haystack, among several other programming services.
Notably, we couldn't integrate live Winter Olympics coverage from Peacock into the mix ... which would have been a bummer had we been at all interested in the Winter Olympics.
The new feature stands out as another indicator that the major OTT platform operators are seeing high demand among users for the comfortable pay TV-like linear grid experience. Roku, for example, just announced the addition of 25 new live linear channels within the Roku Channel's live linear guide. Many of them are built around the simple repackaging of popular cable series franchises like Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men, which are just shown back to back in a never-ending 24/7 sequence.
Google, meanwhile, announced similar customization features for Google TV back in September.
Yes, indeed, for all the resources being spent to innovate algorithmically driven search and discovery, the major OS providers seem to understand that the average TV consumer wasn't too unhappy with old-fashioned channel surfing — they were just unhappy with the price they had to pay to get all those channels via the pay TV ecosystem.
What we particularly like about Amazon's Fire TV live channel guide — it's super-fast to scroll through. At this point, our live guide is mostly populated by our Sling TV subscription. And it's much faster to peruse our Sling TV offerings through Amazon's guide than it is directly via the Sling TV app.
