Why Amazon Can't Find Its Way in the U.K.
Brit producers are baffled by Prime Video's muddled strategy, U.S. hiring bent and risk fear: 'If you’ve got a great show, you’re going to Netflix first'
I cover int’l TV from London. I wrote about the U.K. company behind Netflix’s Adolescence, Ireland’s “conveyer belt” of unscripted production and Blue Cheap: 4 new ways of making TV only look expensive. I’m at manori@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive reports from Manori and Elaine Low for a global perspective on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Install one American executive for a key content job in London, and the Brits will grin and bear it. But send two across the pond within months and, well, you’re going to hear about it.
“Do they want to be successful here? Because this is an interesting way to go about it,” quipped one source.
Such is the local view on Amazon after the company last week announced the appointment of U.S. exec and former Paramount Television Studios president Nicole Clemens as VP and head of international originals for Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios — a hire that came mere months after the company relocated genre series executive Tom Lieber from Los Angeles to London to serve as head of scripted series for the U.K.
When Lieber was first announced, some British producers were cheered that top brass in Culver City felt strongly enough about the U.K. market to send a trusted lieutenant over to right the ship. Prime Video has been a heavy-hitter in unscripted in the U.K. — and to some extent Europe — thanks to comedy format LOL: Last One Laughing and Clarkson’s Farm, but its track record in hit local dramas is notably sparse compared to Netflix or even Disney, with Prime Video shows like The Rig and The Devil’s Hour barely breaking through even locally.
However, ever since Clemens was revealed as the new London-based head of international originals replacing James Farrell (another American, albeit one with extensive experience in Japan and Canada) alarm bells have rung for the creative community, which can’t quite figure out the Prime Video game plan, especially when its streaming rivals have all hired top British executives for their big international content jobs.
Just this week, Disney filled its head of content for EMEA role with well-respected ITV Studios executive Angela Jain, one of the few U.K. execs with the creative and management chops to navigate the bureaucracy that comes with a direct reporting line into Burbank.
In sharp contrast, “Amazon are doing what bad American companies do: They employ Americans, who tend not to understand that the rest of the world operates in a different way to the U.S.,” declares one nonplussed senior U.K. producer well versed in transatlantic dealings.
Says another scripted producer with vast experience dealing with U.K.-based global streamers: “You can look at it and think they don’t trust non-Americans. Needing an L.A. exec to run their international business says something which is not very positive: They want to be in control of everything and do it their way.”
But the latest impasse between Prime Video and drama producers has less to do with resentment at Americans parachuting in for international jobs (after all, some of them have been pretty good at it, with notable examples over the years including the late Jana Bennett, Ileen Maisel, Josh Berger, Marc Lorber and Kristin Jones), and more to do with frustrated producers calling time on the streamer’s confused content strategy and glaring lack of scripted hits out of the biggest English-language content market outside Hollywood.
They’ve got the money and the platform, says the senior producer. “They could be commissioning great, great content, and they’ve just failed to do it so far,” he says.
In fact, many a program maker has reminded me that Prime Video famously passed on Netflix’s hit British drama and Emmy contender Adolescence — a loss I hear Amazon MGM execs are “quite upset” about. But would Adolescence have made sense sitting next to Reacher and The Summer I Turned Pretty on the Prime Video homepage?
“There’s no way that would have worked on the Amazon platform at the moment,” continues the senior producer. “If that’s the kind of content you want to work, you’re going to have to change the kind of content you’ve got. What’s quite interesting is that they think they should have had it and were annoyed about it, which illustrates a lack of thinking about what you’re actually doing.”
This week, I caught up with various insiders about why Prime Video has fumbled scripted output out of the U.K. where rivals have thrived; why the strategy has been so confused — and for so long; and the changes producers are desperate to see from the streamer’s new senior leadership (some of which are already underway, I can exclusively reveal).
In this edition, I’ll report for paid subscribers on:
How confusion about mandates at Prime Video and MGM Amazon Studios in the U.S. made its way across the Atlantic
Why Prime Video has failed to produce a big scripted hit out of the U.K.
The male-skewing fare — a departure from its hit U.S. Guy With a Gun shows — that is working for Prime Video in Britain
The three hit shows from Netflix and Peacock that Lieber cites as references for Prime Video’s targets
The budgets streamers like Prime Video and Netflix are now asking for
Why British executives can help turn a local show into a global hit
Why an American exec working internationally could speed up greenlighting
What U.K. producers are demanding from Prime Video
How Prime Video is trying to meet producers half-way with a new U.K. reporting structure
