PBS Local Stations, Kids, Drama and Documentary FAST Channels Added to Amazon’s Prime Video Offerings

variety.com:

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large PBS is expanding its presence in the linear, free streaming channel business. The public broadcaster has sealed a deal with Amazon to stream its PBS Kids channel, as well as 150 local PBS stations, as part of the Prime Video FAST channel offerings. “FAST” stands for free, ad-supported TV — but the PBS channels will all be commercial free.

For PBS, this reps the first time its programming will be available on a major streaming service for free. As part of the announcement, PBS Distribution also announced two new FAST channels — PBS Drama and PBS Documentaries — as well as another FAST channel that features a rotation of classic PBS series, with “Reading Rainbow” up first.

Those new channels will launch exclusively on Prime Video starting Nov. 26, and will be exclusive to Amazon at first before moving to wider distribution.

This reps the latest experiment in streaming for PBS; viewers to the pubcaster who contribute to their local station are usually given access to PBS Passport, a streamer that features a larger library of on-demand public television programming.