Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
AMC made a surprise launch of a new service this morning called AMC Premiere that includes ad-free versions Preacher, Fear the Walking Dead and Into the Badlands episodes that will appear at the same time as they premiere on linear cable television, the recently concluded Season 7 of The Walking Dead, and bonus scenes and exclusive interviews for numerous AMC shows.
AMC Premiere is available today to Comcast Xfinity TV customers for $5 a month. AMC has its own landing site for the new service, and the announcement this morning says the service is “initially” available to Xfinity TV subscribers, so the likelihood is that AMC will expand it to other bundled-TV providers over time.
For subscribers who already watch full current seasons and extras on the AMC app, the value proposition for AMC Premiere is this: spend another $5 a month on top of your current cable bill to watch the same shows that are already airing on TV online, only without commericals. That’s it. Down the road, AMC could conceivably build AMC Premiere into a freestanding service like CBS All Access, which has its own original programming and doesn’t require a satellite or cable subscription.
“Tens of millions of existing viewers watch our shows through the cable ecosystem, so partnering with Comcast gives us a great opportunity to launch this new idea at scale,” AMC president Charlie Collier said in the announcement. “We’re excited to make AMC Premiere an available option for Xfinity TV customers, as we continue to build deeper relationships with fan communities across all of our programming and platforms.”
For Comcast, AMC Premiere joins a long list of services that Xfinity TV subscribers can already add to their accounts, including premium cable (HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz), premium sports (MLB Extra Innings and MLS Direct Kick) and SVOD (Netflix, History Vault and Lifetime Movie Club).
Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.
