Tv, Amazon.com | featured news

Amazon is developing a set-top box to stream video over the Internet via its Amazon Prime and Instant Video services, according to Bloomberg Businessweek.

Amazon is letting viewers help choose its new lineup of TV shows, scuttling a secretive, wasteful process once reserved for Hollywood taste-makers... There used to be just one way for getting shows on TV. Networks would spend tens of millions of dollars ordering scripts and shooting pilots and then show the fruits of their labor to focus groups. A small group of executives would cherry-pick a few promising shows to put on TV, hoping they'd be a hit with bigger audiences. The process was unscientific, expensive, and often didn't work. It's still how most of the industry operates today.

Amazon.com said it struck a deal with Fox to offer online video-streaming of the company's movies and television shows.