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Amazon is trying to overtake Netflix as the streaming king, and they’re getting interactive with how their next hit will be selected.
Back in the day — and by that I mean roughly a decade ago — television producers had it a lot rougher than they do now. Where Netflix is out there wording entire seasons of shows without testing an audience, producers and executives used rely on how well their first few episode would do in order to see if they had a future.
In the streaming game, reading ratings have drastically changed and shows get cancelled after a while season is available to be digested and not mere episodes. This is actually a better way of doing things, as some shows need a handful of episodes under its belt to really get an audience engaged. Had FX just based Sons of Anarchy off its first few episodes, the following six seasons of the show might not exist. Ditto with Breaking Bad and others.
Amazon isn’t scrapping this method of sticking to your bet, but it’s doubling down by using an old school method that when fully explained seems cool and interactive. Amazon is allowing Prime subscribers to choose which of their upcoming five television pilots interests them the most and which one they want to see an entire season of.
The idea is so simple it hurts: Let the viewers pick what show they want to see based on five pilots. That’s essentially how television works — actually, that is how TV works. Since these streaming services have no way of gauging week-to-week metrics on ratings, with all shows being dumped at once, it’s hard to see a dud coming.
Netflix is in a position where they can throw ten shows against a wall and the worst case scenario is only six of them stick. But for ever House of Cards and Daredevil there’s a handful of Marco Polo, BoJack Horseman Season 1 and The OA‘s to go around.
Amazon isn’t reinventing the wheel, rather they’re using an old method of selecting a show and marketing it as exactly what it is, which makes it seem hyper interactive. It’s a selling point that other services may follow suit with, as the old school ways of doing television are still finding their way to this new school way of life.
