Chris Ottinger didn’t exactly go all out on a media blitz in May after he was given the distribution reins for Amazon and MGM’s combined libraries.
But Next TV was more than happy to host the longtime MGM distribution executive Tuesday afternoon at the Next TV Summit, part of Future’s two-day L.A. TV Week event, held at the Sofitel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. The events continued Tuesday with the Advanced Advertising Summit and 40 Under 40 Awards.
Interviewed by The Ankler's Elaine Low, Ottinger gave us a unique perspective on how the occupied southern ranks of the conquered operate under the rule of their strange northern technology overlords.
The values differ profoundly, but the good news is that basic content distribution instincts and skills are still useful to these bloodless, binary benefactors of the digital future.
For now.
Here are excerpts from the discussion between Ottinger and Low.
Elaine Low: Chris, tell us how it's all been going for you.
Chris Ottinger: Sure. It's been a crazy year and a half. We closed the merger with Amazon, I think it was in March of last year. And, uh, in that time we’ve become ‘Amazonian,’ which is saying a lot more than it says in just those words. It’s a wildly different corporate culture than what we were exposed to in any of our prior roles at studios. I've worked at MGM, I've worked at Fox, I worked at CBS, I worked at Paramount. Nothing was remotely similar to working at Amazon. Really, really different company.
EL: Has anything surprised you? I wonder, being under the Amazon Studios umbrella now, culturally, how does it vary in a legacy story space like MGM?
CO: Yeah, I think the biggest kind — and I’m sure everyone here will understand when I say the biggest changes with — you know, Amazon is a giant global, I think the biggest employer in the world. It is a tech-driven company, that it comes out of Seattle, but it comes out of Silicon Valley culture. And that culture is just a lot different. A lot of the things that we assumed coming out of the studio space, everything was driven by our catalog and our legacy. At Amazon, it's really driven by an obsession with our customers. So it’s really how do we, as quickly as possible, drive value for customers inside our service? It’s a really different viewpoint.
EL: Tell us a little bit about your work at Amazon MGM Studios distribution, now that it’s not just distribution of the more than 4,000 film titles and 17,000 TV episodes under the MGM catalog, but now also inclusive of Amazon Originals — which, as I understand it, are now able to be licensed to third-party platforms?
CO: Absolutely. So it has been, it’s a change, I think, in the business. One of the main reasons that Amazon bought MGM was to get distribution. We didn't understand this when we were being purchased, but it's become clear on the other side of the deal. Our work in the last six to nine months has really been driven about, how do we bring Amazon original programming out into the third-party distribution environment? And that’s been a giant challenge. They always had their fingers in it. If you go back and look at some of the decisions they made, they’ve been touching distribution, but the mandate going forward is very much to build a proper distribution business around all of the Amazon original content. And it’s a shocking amount of content. I had no idea the catalog was as big as it is.
EL: Tell me about any other kind of, are there any other interesting business experiments that you’re looking at, especially now that you’re looking at a screening environment? I know we talked a little bit before this panel about, uh, sort of the test and learn environment and I’m sure everyone would want to hear more about that.
CO: Sure. You know, one of the key things that Amazon is really into is this concept of test and learn. And we love two-way doors, and test and learn is part of that same concept. So we’ll do stuff where we know that if it’s a mistake, it’s a mistake and we can just move on. We’re not going to have committed the company in a way that there could be a lasting challenge. So most recently, we had two really, I think, interesting examples. One was Air.
EL: I think I find the valuation question so interesting. Because especially when you see all these other streaming services out there that are starting to cull content, a lot of that based on the valuation and how they’re performing. So when you are having conversations with your peers, what is the vibe right now?
CO: I think it’s the Wild West, I really do. I think everybody is interested. The level of interest from clients in our original product was incredibly high and that was super encouraging. But we’ve got to expect that these models have [to be] tested and we just don’t know, right? We’re looking for a breakout story. What's that story that performs really well? I think there’s a really positive view of the future of, you know, what kind of product can work and different launching methodologies. My real hope and my expectation is that things like Air, this hybrid model where we’re doing a theatrical release, tells the consumer that this is a real movie. It's not a direct-to-service title, and there's real long-term value with that. That's really the model that I'm most hopeful about. But it is a really big market. There’s so many buyers with so many different interests. Everything will find its home and will find its place. But what I’d love to see is real success with some direct-to-service originals.
EL: I think business model-wise we're in for an interesting couple of years.
CO: Yeah. We’re not gonna know the answers. Maybe this time next year, we’ll have a good idea of what it all means, but we’re not gonna know for a little while.
