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CBS, Amazon Tie In Streaming Deal For Under The Dome

CBS and Amazon.com announced a deal this morning, which will bring exclusive access to the upcoming CBS "Under the Dome" series to Amazon Prime Instant Video, Amazon's video-on-demand service. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The companies said that Amazon Prime members will get access to the series four days after broadcast, and will also be able to purchase and download episodes for playback offline.

The licensing deal is part of a growing trend of online video streaming services--Hulu, Netflix, Amazon--to develop their own stable of exclusive online content, to attract viewers and subscribers to their services. Those efforts have helped to make new, exclusive Hollywood content deals a key part of the strategy of those services, whether brokered through existing studios, or through such efforts as Amazon Studios and YouTube's Premium Channels. Amazon announced another, similar deal, for PBS' Downton Abbey, last week.

Amazon and CBS said that Amazon Prime members will have unlimited streaming of all of the series' episodes four days after initial braodcast on CBS, as part of a new, in-season online subscription-vieo-on-demand (SVOD) window. Under The Dome is based on a Steven King book.