The White House and Amazon have struck a deal to carry President Obama’s final State of the Union on the retailer’s online video site.
Amazon won’t live-stream Tuesday night’s address, but it will make the video available to all customers the next day.
The White House said the first of its kind arrangement is part of a “multi-platform streaming and social broadcast of the State of the Union that reflects the ways people experience live events in 2016.”
The administration is promoting a number of other ways to watch and read Obama’s speech on-demand.
An Amazon spokeswoman said the State of the Union streaming is not connected to Amazon Prime, its subscription service that includes access to television shows and movies.
Instead, the Obama speech video will be freely available through Amazon Video.
“Beginning Wednesday through the end of the week, Amazon will make the speech available across all devices for Americans to watch the State of the Union in the same way we’re used to consuming video content in 2016,” White House digital director Jason Goldman wrote in a blog post Sunday evening.
As in past years, the speech will also be archived on YouTube and on the White House’s own web site.
But the high-profile availability of the video on Amazon — one of the web’s biggest destinations — may help the administration reach people who otherwise might tune out political and governmental news.
In a sign of the changing times, Goldman specifically mentioned TV cord-cutters in his blog post.
“For those who’ve cut the cord from cable and network TV: Whether you use a smart TV, web browser, mobile device, or tablet there’s a way for you to watch the president’s speech as it happens and on-demand,” he wrote.
The Amazon part is new, but the White House has taken similarly non-traditional steps to promote the State of the Union in past years.
In 2015 the official White House Twitter feed said “the best place to watch the State of the Union at 9pm ET” was through the government’s live stream.
