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Former Amazon MGM boss Jennifer Salke used to be caught in a streaming id disaster that strains again to Seattle, now not Hollywood. Photograph-Representation: Vulture; Pictures: Top Video (JoJo Whilden, Jasper Savage), Michael Buckner/GG2025/Penske Media by the use of Getty Pictures
It used to be July 2018, and Jen Salke — slightly 5 months into her new gig operating Amazon Studios — discovered herself sitting on a ballroom level in Beverly Hills gamely taking questions from a roomful of newshounds, myself integrated, accrued for the semiannual TV Critics Affiliation press excursion. For approximately half-hour, Salke presented her ideas on the whole thing from the still-nascent Lord of the Rings sequence to a just-announced “international tv franchise” she’d purchased from the Russo brothers. After I were given my probability to quiz Salke, I attempted to get her on document about one thing slightly other: the dreadful state of Top Video’s consumer interface — and in particular, whether or not she had heard of any plans to support it.
Relatively to my marvel, Salke now not handiest agreed with my review (“I used to be at the facet of criticizing that as smartly,” she mentioned) however published that adjust used to be at the method. Right through a contemporary seek advice from to Amazon HQ in Seattle, engineers had proven her a remodeled Top Video interface, one she mentioned can be “a lot more intuitive” and very much support the consumer enjoy. Salke couldn’t say precisely when subscribers would see this spiffy new UI however promised it will be “coming quickly.”
Because it grew to become out, “quickly” ended up being 4 complete years: Top Video’s long-anticipated UI improve wasn’t published till July 2022.
Remaining week, Salke’s seven-year run as head of Amazon Studios got here to an abrupt finish when she introduced she can be transitioning to a manufacturing deal on the corporate. Hypothesis about why she used to be driven out has targeted on her dealing with of the corporate’s movie trade (particularly the Bond franchise) or the belief that Amazon’s large spending on TV initiatives hasn’t yielded sufficient game-changing hits for Top. And but once I heard the inside track about her ouster, my thoughts temporarily went again to that 2018 TCA consultation and the unhappy saga of Top’s consumer interface.
Lots of the court cases in regards to the Salke technology are indictments of the bigger disorder within Amazon.
No longer as a result of that complete mishegoss performed any type of function in Salke’s go out. As giant as her activity at Amazon Studios used to be, it by no means integrated oversight of the product and engineering groups for Top Video. That mentioned, the truth that it took the period of a whole U.S. presidential time period (after which some) to even start to cope with such crucial factor speaks volumes in regards to the dysfunctional streaming universe through which Salke discovered herself working. Not like maximum different platforms with user-interface demanding situations (mainly, everybody now not named Netflix), Amazon is swimming in money and has spent many years serving on-line shoppers. It’s vocally a “customer-centric” tech corporate, via and thru. Turning in a greater consumer enjoy, and one that successfully confirmed off the sequence and films Salke’s groups had been making, will have to now not were a heavy carry. Amazon completely had the assets and engineering capacity to get a hold of a consumer interface that works as easily and intuitively as Netflix’s does — if it sought after to.
However as any person who’s hung out poking across the crowded virtual aisles of the Top Video app is aware of, that’s now not what took place. Even after that 2022 redesign, and a few next tweaks, Amazon’s personal unique content material steadily seems like a supporting participant at the platform moderately than the principle appeal. My idea on why the app stays a scorching mess, even with Amazon’s assets: That is what the parents at Amazon HQ in Seattle need. In spite of the entire billions Salke has been allowed to spend money on programming, the Top Video interface hasn’t in reality moved on from its unique venture, which used to be to function Amazon’s hub for promoting virtual variations of alternative studios’ content material. Unique presentations and films are patently necessary, however they’re now not the lifeblood of Top the way in which they’re on Netflix or Max.
And that’s why, even nowadays, subscribers opening up the Top app will nonetheless steadily be greeted now not with a promo for a brand new Amazon Studios–produced comedy or drama however with a pitch to subscribe to Paramount+ or hire a brand new film from Sony or watch some crappy FAST channel. Certain, the total scrolling enjoy is slightly higher than earlier than the 2022 redesign, and the most important Top Originals undoubtedly get a push. However they’re at perfect a co-star at the platform moderately than the principle appeal. And whilst this setup is indubitably nice for Amazon’s final analysis — the corporate will get a wholesome minimize while you join Max or Acorn TV by the use of Top or while you hire a brand new free up throughout the app — it’s a awful approach to construct emblem loyalty to your personal streaming carrier, and it made it more difficult for Salke to get eyeballs on her initiatives. However extra importantly, it underscores that what she and her group did used to be all the time competing with the priorities of alternative portions of the Amazon and Top Video ecosystem.
None of this will have to be taken as some type of blanket apologia for Salke’s tenure. Like several ingenious exec, she obviously had her flaws, specifically at the feature-film facet of her portfolio. Believe: One of the most key causes Salke used to be employed clear of NBC seven years in the past used to be as a result of she used to be referred to as a talent-friendly exec who knew the right way to therapeutic massage the egos of the writers, actors, and manufacturers who stay Hollywood operating. However whilst she could have been in a position to try this at the TV facet of the trade, reporting from Closing date’s Mike Fleming and Puck’s Matt Belloni suggests she used to be much less adept at managing film skillability, maximum particularly the guardians of the James Bond franchise, and typically had little success working out the right way to make motion pictures paintings for Amazon. (If this is the case, she’d be only one extra TV-exec celebrity who struggled with equivalent gigs within the movie international — assume Brandon Tartikoff and Gail Berman.) In the meantime, The Ankler’s Lesley Goldberg this week talked to a couple of resources who complained that Salke and her group, together with daily TV leader Vernon Sanders, took endlessly to expand and green-light initiatives, or even then the corporate steadily perceived to have an issue “realizing what it sought after” from creators, as Goldberg put it.
So, no, Salke isn’t leaving her gig operating Amazon Studios universally cherished or the sufferer of a few grave injustice from her bosses. However I feel most of the court cases we’re seeing now in regards to the Salke technology at Amazon — together with the Bond brouhaha and the underwhelming efficiency of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy — are indictments of the bigger disorder within Amazon round what Top Video will have to be and whose imaginative and prescient shapes the emblem.
For instance, one among Salke’s first giant complications upon arriving at Amazon used to be working out the right way to make LOTR paintings as a TV display. She confronted this drawback for one explanation why handiest: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos awoke one morning, made up our minds Top wanted its Recreation of Thrones, overpaid for the rights to a assets that had already been smartly exploited in function movies, then instructed somebody else — Salke and Sanders — to make all of it paintings. Or even then, Salke needed to arrange competing corporate priorities (and in all probability egos) when it got here time to roll out the display.
Top Video isn’t noticed as the primary position creators need to pass.
Living proof: When HBO introduced it used to be scheduling the release of its much-anticipated Recreation of Thrones derivative Space of the Dragon on August 21, 2022, Amazon stubbornly made up our minds to stay with its plan — introduced a complete yr forward of time — to debut Rings of Energy lower than two weeks later, on September 1. That transfer all however assured the Amazon display would lose the battle for consideration amongst shoppers as a result of, as smartly referred to as Lord of the Rings is, GoT is the a lot more recent, warmer assets. The good factor to do would were to retreat and thrust back Rings of Energy a couple of months. However that may have indicated Amazon wasn’t absolutely assured in Bezos’s child and, what’s extra, it will have tousled the synergies Amazon sought after to cook dinner up between the display and the debut of Thursday Evening Soccer on Top. So the premiere date stayed, and a story — Rings of Energy is a sadness — used to be born.
Right here’s the item: Whilst Salke had a ton of energy as head of Amazon Studios, and indubitably some affect in how Top Video ran, she didn’t have the similar type of transparent mandate Dana Walden has operating Disney+, ABC, and Hulu. Walden has bosses, positive — Bob Iger virtually unquestionably co-signs any tests with a nine-figure sum — however her phrase is going with regards to each content material and platform choices. That’s now not the case at Amazon. What’s worse, I’m now not even positive Amazon has any want to construct a profitable stand-alone streaming platform up to it merely needs to search out content material of any type that is helping it promote extra promoting and transfer extra product throughout Amazon’s many e-commerce channels. That’s now not essentially a foul factor; YouTube has proven you don’t must apply the Netflix or HBO or CBS templates to construct a super-successful video carrier. However it’s now not the type of style perfect fitted to an exec like Salke, a Hollywood vet raised to consider in such things as emblem id and target audience interest. In spite of everything, her departure most likely got here as a result of she merely stopped being as efficient at servicing Amazon’s trade style as her boss, Top Video and Amazon MGM Studios leader Mike Hopkins, wanted her to be.
Nevertheless, I’d argue that general, Salke’s seven-year stretch had extra wins than losses — and that surviving see you later in an organization as brutal as Amazon (or, slightly frankly, any Hollywood-exec suite) is itself an accomplishment. Right through her tenure, she helped Top evolve from a fledgling manufacturer of a handful of little-watched HBO Lite productions into a competent purveyor of middlebrow, quite standard Content material. That’s a praise: In 2025, Amazon, an organization that’s turn into a application on par with water or electrical energy suppliers, does now not want to be focusing its energies on profitable the High quality TV wars. So whilst Salke clearly did make some performs for Emmys and perhaps wasted some cash doing so, generally, she introduced a network-TV ethos to Top, development on paintings began by way of her predecessors (she didn’t green-light The Boys) to make the platform the premier vacation spot for Dad TV like Reacher, Go, and Fallout. Given the funding Amazon has made within the NFL, that’s a lovely excellent lane to stake out.
Salke may be leaving Amazon Studios in higher form than she discovered it. A couple of months earlier than Bezos tapped Salke to be his Hollywood participant, The Wall Side road Magazine’s Ben Fritz and Joe Flint penned a blistering takedown of the corporate and then-leader Roy Worth (the man who would quickly be driven out within the wake of sexual-harassment allegations). “The place Amazon is Failing to Dominate: Hollywood,” the headline learn. It chronicled the loss of international hits at Top and the fading Emmys haul for its crop of status dramas whilst shooting interior disaffection over the place the unit stood. As one Amazon Studios insider instructed the paper on the time, “We had been meant to convey the most productive practices of one of the crucial profitable corporations in The united states to Hollywood. As an alternative, we’re getting chewed up.” The tale even were given iconic manufacturer David E. Kelley, who labored at the first season of Billy Bob Thornton’s Goliath for the streamer, to head at the document slamming Top’s skillability family members — or lack thereof. “Their leisure department is slightly of a gong display,” he mentioned. “They’re in far more than their heads.”
It’s transparent Salke’s tenure didn’t totally rehabilitate Amazon’s Hollywood popularity, given the court cases over the Bond scenario or the criticisms levied in Goldberg’s piece. Top Video isn’t noticed as the primary position creators need to pass. However she wooed numerous stars to the platform, and extra persons are staring at its programming now than in 2018, each within the U.S. and world wide. And whilst it will not be anyplace as regards to dominating Hollywood — that will be Netflix — Top Video is up there with Disney within the struggle for No. 2. In spite of everything, regardless that, that wasn’t excellent sufficient for the Borg-like collective this is Amazon, which is why seven years after that press convention in Beverly Hills, Salke is now an Amazon Studios–based totally manufacturer and now not the boss.
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