Amazon Ends Public Voting On TV Pilots

Amazon will end one of the more unique content curation systems in the entertainment business. Jeff Bezos’ e-commerce behemoth announced over the weekend that the company’s TV production arm will no longer use public feedback on series pilots to determine whether or not to go ahead with a series, according to Entertainment Weekly.

For years, Amazon put pilots on Prime Video for subscribers to watch and vote on. It was never the only thing to determine whether or not a series got a full order, but it did not hurt, either. Popular, award-winning shows like “The Man in the High Castle” and “Transparent” were greenlit at least partially due to fan feedback.

Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, told media at a Television Critics Association’s press event Saturday that the program was shutting down. Amazon will use its own “testing barometers” and “some user data” but will no longer rely on public polling.

It seems Amazon would rather make full series orders from the start rather than do the traditional pilot process. It takes significantly less time to get a season finished that way, which is why Amazon’s new “Jack Ryan” series with John Krasinski got greenlit without a pilot. Before being ousted for alleged sexual harassment, former Amazon Studios VP Roy Price said last August that the company would rely less on pilots.

As more and more prestigious television series spring up on streaming services rather than traditional networks, how studios utilize fan feedback may soon evolve. Netflix, for instance, will revive canceled programs if Twitter hashtag campaigns from devastated fans are loud enough. Shows that get canned on traditional TV often end up on streaming services.

The video game industry saw its own struggle with democratization over the past few years with Steam Greenlight. Steam is the dominant digital marketplace for PC gaming, and for a while it let users vote directly on which smaller, independent games would be sold on the service. However, the service had a troll problem and did little to stop questionable products from appearing on the storefront.

Steam parent company Valve shut down Greenlight in 2017. It was replaced by Steam Direct, a more traditional marketplace curation service run by Valve.