For an industry that has spent the better part of two decades dismantling the television business as it was once understood, streaming services have developed a curious appetite for the ceremonies that celebrate it.
Amazon's Prime Video announced on Wednesday that it had secured the rights to broadcast the Emmy Awards, the latest in a series of moves by streaming platforms to acquire the kind of live, communal viewing experiences that their on-demand libraries were originally designed to replace. The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, will keep the ceremony in its traditional September berth and, in a notable concession to the old ways, will not place it behind a paywall.
"Television has never been more global, and the Emmys should be a celebration that the world can share," Cris Abrego, chairman of the Television Academy, said in a statement. "Now, Prime Video audiences in more than 200 countries will be able to experience the Emmys live with no subscription required."
(Whether audiences in 200 countries have been waiting for this particular opportunity is a question the statement did not address.)
Mr. Abrego's remarks gestured toward Prime Video's plans to expand the awards beyond their annual broadcast, with the platform describing ambitions to turn the Emmys into what it called a "year-round cultural celebration." What form that celebration might take — additional programming, archival content, perhaps a countdown clock — remained unspecified.
The acquisition continues a pattern that has seen streaming services, having largely won the war for scripted programming, turn their attention to the live events that still draw audiences in real time. It is also, one might note, a useful way for a platform to remind viewers that it exists during the months when they are not watching "Reacher."
For the Television Academy, the arrangement offers global reach and a partner fluent in the language of scale. For Amazon, it offers something harder to manufacture: prestige, delivered annually, in formal attire.
Original story published in adweek.com: "And the Emmys Go to... Prime Video"