Brian Williams is set to anchor election night coverage on Prime Video. Is Amazon getting into live news?
By Brian Stelter, CNN
New York (CNN) — Amazon attracts millions of live viewers for Thursday Night Football games. The company also carries A-list concert performances and a seemingly endless number of shopping live-streams. Up next: One special night of news coverage.
The former NBC News and MSNBC anchor Brian Williams is nearing a surprise deal to lead election night coverage on Amazon’s Prime Video, according to three people with knowledge of the talks, marking the streaming service’s first foray into live news.
The proposed live-stream, during what will almost certainly be the highest-stakes news event of the year, would showcase down-the-middle analysis of the election results with Williams and a wide array of contributors and guests.
For one night, and maybe more, Amazon would be thrust into direct competition with CNN, ABC, CBS, and Williams’ former network home.
Amazon’s election coverage plan engendered lots of TV industry chatter when it was first reported by Puck and Variety over the weekend. Amazon and rivals like Netflix have generally avoided news programming even as they have expanded into sports and other categories. Does Amazon and its billionaire founder Jeff Bezos want to start a news network?
The answer is no, according to the sources who spoke with CNN. (They insisted on anonymity because the Williams project has not been announced yet.) Amazon, they say, is approaching the election stream as a one-time-only live event, not as a signal about its future intentions.
“Amazon executives have told us, ‘We are not building a news operation,’” according to a talent agent who is not involved in the Williams deal.
The costs associated with newsgathering and the controversies that come with 24/7 coverage might be obvious turnoffs for a tech giant like Amazon.
That said, news coverage can also create loyal bonds with big audiences, especially on special occasions like a presidential election. Streaming platforms like Max (from CNN’s parent Warner Bros Discovery) and Hulu (from ABC’s parent Disney) promote live and on-demand news content from their journalistic outlets.
Election coverage is “a special event for Amazon, just like Thursday Night Football,” one of the sources said. Amazon also live streams the Academy of Country Music Awards and just struck a major $1.8 billion per year deal to carry NBA games starting next year (WBD is now suing the league over the deal.)
In the future, Amazon could conceivably invest in live coverage of other major news events, though no such plans have been made.
Spokespeople for Amazon and Williams declined to comment.
The notion of a Big Tech heavyweight distributing its own election night TV show would have been hard to imagine a decade ago. It is a testament to the growing power of the tech industry and the fragmenting power of old-school television.
Williams, 65, is a product of broadcast TV who led NBC’s election night coverage in 2008 and 2012. The Amazon election event – which has yet to be named – will be his first major project since signing off MSNBC three years ago.
Jonathan Wald, a veteran of NBC and CNN who worked closely with Williams at MSNBC, will executive-produce the live stream, the sources said.
The election coverage will be produced in Los Angeles (a notable difference from all the network specials that are based in New York and Washington) from Amazon MGM Studios’ virtual soundstage.
Williams will anchor live well into the night as election results come in. If election night morphs into something like election week, as it did in 2020, it remains to be determined whether Amazon’s live coverage would continue.
One theory undergirding the live event, according to the sources, is that many viewers are open to new options and alternatives to traditional political coverage. But the competition on election night is fierce: Networks like CNN and NBC typically see huge influxes of viewers. CNN set some streaming traffic records during the so-called election week in 2020.
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