Ok, hang in here with me.
The recent paramount/discovery meeting may not have been about a merger. It may have been about bundling, and amazon is in a prime position to be that distributor.
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I accepted the free trial of Prime they have been offering me for years just so the wife could watch the Jets lose at Miami, and the video quality was OK on a Roku hooked to a LG 4K OLED TV, but I have the Roku cabled to the router with 100Mb ethernet, and we have Verizon FiOS fiber interwebnet, so YMMV.
But I did not buy anything with Prime, I don’t need anything. And I did not watch any of their other “content”, as I can’t even watch all the stuff that “CouchPotato” automagically torrents to my local disc array.
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When January 13, 2024 brooks dawn, it will be a biting reminder of the 55 consecutive winters of discontent for long-suffering fans of the New York Jets (the slim reed of a silver lining, in the form of being one of the few NFL teams to have a perfectly-undefeated record in the Super Bowl wears thin over time, but hope springs eternal).
The &@mñ! Miami Dolphins have had as great a hand in putting my 2nd-favorite franchise in place as has the historically-inept methodology utilized by this or that inhabitant of the ownership’s front office - but there’s a silver lining there, as well, at least from their point of view:
The Jets franchise has been consistently profitable.
I have a Roku and an HDTV hooked to it and quality is good enough.
Prime Video, Prime Music, and Prime Books all help justify the cost of a prime membership.
Prime Video will be showing ads shortly, unless you pay an extra fee.
Amazon can and does allocate costs and profits to various business segments so one should not assume that losses are attributed to any segment are not offset by profits in another segment.
It seems to be able to sell a significant amount of advertising on FreeVee (formerly IMDBTv) so don’t discount the coming ad revenue.
The SAG, Directors and Writers Strikes got bupkiss in additional revenue for their members. It will be years before they recover what they lost by not working.
Disney’s revenue problems are not the same as any other streaming service. Disney+ is a cannibal and is eating revenues which would have come from cable, ABC and movie theatres as well as other streaming services.
Warner has some similar problems but is not to the same extent.
IMO Prime Video and Prime Music are like the hotdogs at Costco. They help build customer loyalty and keep the Prime renewal rate up.
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Yes, as a holder of a “Personal Seat License” an expensive thing which merely entitles me to buy Season Tickets for outrageous prices, I can assure you that the Jets are VERY profitable.
I have season tickets to the Jets, the Mets, and the Metropolitan Opera. All 3 play mostly tragedies.
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Hey, at least it gives the rights to your great-great-great-great-grandkids to buy super bowl tickets at face value, hah
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Just got an email now about Amazon Prime Video will now have ads and if you want an ad free experience it will cost you $2.99 a month lol.
You sir, are a such an optimist about the Jets, you are at risk of being institutionalized against your will ! 
Ok now I’m not paying extra lol…
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They have an opportunity here.
Buy an item with Prime and get an episode ad free.
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We marked ours … Return to Sender …
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We noticed that you aren’t taking full advantage of your Prime Membership.
As a Prime member, you have access to all the music + top podcasts ad-free from Amazon Music, at no additional cost.
Discover new music and podcasts based on your likes and shuffle play any artist, album, or playlist.
Can we transfer this “no additional cost” feature to our videos and movies please?
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This drives me nuts. I lovingly created a night-time playlist of some of my favorite pieces, and for a while Alexa took the cue, “Play my night-time playlist,” and on nights I battled insomnia it helped. But recently, Alexa has begun to shuffle pieces in random order and add in music she thinks I might like. Yikes! I might like Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake but that doesn’t mean I want to hear the 1812 Overture in the middle of the night.
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Maybe some heavy metal or rap instead?
And the collapse of Prime begins…
One night as I stared at the clock, I called to mind the advice offered by Boris Johnson, when you find yourself in a spot of trouble, there is nothing better for you to do than to recite a bit of poetry.
I launched into a recitation, sotto voce, but I guess not quite quietly enough. Suddenly a disembodied voice whispers back to me, “Would you like for me to enable whisper mode???”
Just about jumped out of my skin. Got out of bed and threw the damn device in the laundry bin.
This is the Boris Johnson clip I referenced above:
Boris Johnson recites extracts of “The Iliad” in Greek (youtube.com)
The changes to Amazon Music which have occurred over the past few year, reaching the current state described by @SallyAnne have not caused the collapse of Prime. Do not think the ads on Prime Video will cause the collapse either. I suspect they will be more skillfully deployed than YouTube, Fubo, Roku, and most of the other streamers. At least initially as promised in the message.
People spent more for Video Tapes and DVDs which had advertising at the beginning.
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“Prime” position? 
“The Expanse” alone has made a Prime membership worth every penny for me.
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January 29 in the US. Love how the Brits are calling this out, though!
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