Amazon will fetch you books, groceries and home security systems.
Amazon asked its customers what they think about TV news. Here’s the survey.
Why do you think Jeff Bezos wants to know about that?
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Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
What about news?
Perhaps Amazon is trying to answer that question. It has commissioned a survey that queries customers about their news consumption habits — specifically, the way they watch TV news.
Amazon recently hired research firm Qualtrics to ask Amazon users how they “experience the news.” A helpful reader sent us screenshots of the survey; we’ll post a selection below.
No comment from Amazon PR. But it’s worth noting that a couple of the questions have to do with customers’ use of the company’s Fire TV video hardware, so it’s possible that it’s related to the people who work in that group. Also noted: Like any video platform, Fire TV already supports plenty of news apps. One last note: Amazon spent time trying to build a pay TV service, then backed away from the idea.
And the requisite caveat: Amazon asking customers about something does not equal Amazon doing something. It’s reasonable to assume that Amazon conducts many surveys about many products and services, and in most cases they lead to ... not that much.
Still! Aren’t you glad you can get a tiny peek into Amazon’s head and learn about what they’re interested in learning about? Me, too.
First, Amazon wanted to make sure that survey respondents didn’t work for one of its big competitors. Note who’s on this particular list — Comcast and Verizon, along with some Very Big Tech Companies — and who’s not, including Facebook and Netflix.
Amazon also wanted to make sure that bloggers or “news-casters” weren’t weighing in on this, either.
On to the show: Amazon wanted to know how often users watched the news. That’s “watch,” not “read” or “listen to.”
Another news-watching question:
What kind of news — local, national or international — do you care about?
Let’s drill down a bit:
And now, a question about “news sources”: Note that this one mixes TV networks with newspapers with websites with social media (just like everyone else does).
Here are a couple more clues that whoever paid for this survey is spending time thinking about the way you think about Fire TV:
And one last: Another question about the way you think about news, framed in ways that you probably don’t (may not?) think about news.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
