There's quite a bit to unpack from entertainment business writer Kim Masters' rich plunge into Amazon's video entertainment culture, published earlier this week in The Hollywood Reporter.
It's a deep dive into the e-commerce giant's creative acumen under Amazon and MGM studios chief Jennifer Salke ... and how a technology company with a flat, open-seating culture might not always mesh well with a Hollywood talent pool that values the perks of meritocracy and status. Top-level producers can and do get perks, but other creatives tend to be treated like cogs.
We'll link here again, spare you the breathless aggregation, and let you immerse yourself in the real thing. But we are going to break out and highlight one real interesting point from Masters' fun, easy-scrolling 5,000-word read.
While Amazon's $1 billion-a-season acquisition of the NFL's Thursday Night Football package failed in its inaugural all-streaming season to deliver the mass-audience girth it had when it was in broadcast television, it did yield more Amazon Prime Video subscription sign-ups than any other show or movie ever presented on Prime.
Jay Marine, who heads Amazon's sports efforts, told staff in September that the first game of the 2022 TNF season between the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chief and playoff-bound Los Angeles Chargers generated “the biggest three hours for U.S. Prime sign ups ever in the history of Amazon.”
According to Masters, this is causing some top-level Amazon decision-makers to rethink investments in shows like The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. The most expensive series ever created, Rings produced a sizeable audience, the report said, but was watched to completion by only 37% of U.S. Prime Video subscribers who started it -- a metric deemed disappointing by Amazon.
Of the $16.7 billion spent by Amazon on all music, video and gaming entertainment last year, about $7 billion went to original series -- less than half of what Netlfix spends on originals, but still a sizable figure.
According to Masters, some in the video entertainment industry have begun to "worry that the NFL deal has shown Amazon a way to sign up subscribers in a way that is not as unpredictable as making scripted entertainment."
Masters also suggests the live-sports vs. scripted originals juxtaposition may also be exacerbating an emerging rivalry between Salke and Mike Hopkins, the former Hulu executive who serves as senior VP for Prime Video and Amazon Studios, and who's purview is live sports.
“Her strategy is to get whatever seems hot. Mike’s vision was to cut costs on shows and get football,” a "former insider" tells Masters, describing the two very different workings styles of the two top-level executives.
