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Television & New Media
2017, Vol. 18(5) 441­–458
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Amazon’s Pilot Season

Cory Barker1

Abstract
Launched in 2013, Amazon Studios’s Pilot Season reportedly offers an alternative
to the conventional Hollywood development cycle by soliciting viewer feedback
through short surveys and star reviews to determine which projects are developed
into original series. However, while Amazon Studios publicly assures us that viewers
“Call the Shots,” the company has swiftly navigated away from such participatory
discourse. Through a discursive analysis of promotional materials, executive and
talent interviews, and responses from trade presses and critics, this article unpacks
how Amazon Studios diminished the import of viewer feedback at the first sign
of significant attention from the critical community and subsequently shifted to
promotional discourses centered on markers of “Quality TV.” This case ultimately
demonstrates that, as discursive strategies, participatory culture and Quality TV serve
distinctive functions for the industry, with the former often relegated to attention-
seeking gimmick and the latter functioning as a powerful tool of legitimation.

Keywords
participatory culture, social media, television, streaming video, Quality TV, Amazon

On February 6, 2014, Amazon Studios, the nascent production arm of Amazon.com,

announced the second round of its “Pilot Season,” a showcase for television series in
development. Like its competitors in streaming video, Netflix and Hulu, Amazon
invested in original series production to supplement its growing library of licensed
film and television content (Wallenstein 2012). However, unlike its competition online

1Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

Corresponding Author:
Cory Barker, Indiana University, 800 E. Third Street, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Email: barkerc@indiana.edu
442 Television & New Media 18(5)

and across broadcast and cable, Amazon promised a “transparent” pilot process that
permitted viewers to watch and provide feedback on budding projects through brief
surveys, Amazon.com reviews, and star ratings (Schneider 2013). To underscore the
transparency of the process, studio chief Roy Price pledged that viewer feedback
would play a “very influential” role in the determination of which pilots went forward
to series (Kafka 2013). Across the web, Amazon celebrated the power of this feedback
with a provocative slogan: “Watch the Shows. Call the Shots.”
Launched in 2010 to develop projects in partnership with Warner Bros., Amazon
Studios purports to offer “community” driven “collaboration” between industry pros,
aspiring creators, and active users (Lieberman 2012). The studio encourages prospec-
tive filmmakers to submit works in progress—from storyboards to full scripts—to get
notes not only from Hollywood executives but also from the site’s user base. Although
some have critiqued this process as “outsourcing” (Grant 2014), Amazon consistently
praises the “significant” “power of the people” whose feedback functions as a “helpful
indicator of what is working and what is not” (Amazon Studios 2013a). The warm
reception to the second Pilot Season, then, was not just a validation of the studio’s
ability to develop projects; it also confirmed the utility of the feedback system. Yet, by
mid-2014, Amazon’s promotional discourses began to shift in a notable way. The posi-
tive critical response to the second Pilot Season enabled the studio to emphasize
branding markers of “Quality TV,” chiefly the presence of auteur figures, the artistic
freedom granted by the studio, and associations with other, “better” art forms. More
importantly, this new promotional strategy downgraded the importance of viewer
feedback that was so prominent in prior discourses.
Amazon is not alone in this approach. The media industries have long solicited
consumer feedback and participation, from private test screenings and focus groups to
voter-driven reality series such as American Idol (Fox, 2002–2016). Today, Hollywood
turns to consumers to promote projects on social media, or even to help fund them via
crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Meanwhile, companies across sectors ask
consumers to immediately rate their products and services. As viewers, fans, or cus-
tomers, we are told, now more than ever, that our perspective matters. However, feed-
back culture constitutes a rather ambivalent manifestation of consumer agency. In
framing feedback as empowering, the media industries not only secure free—if easy—
labor and collect essential data from consumers, but they also inspire a pre-fandom
among consumers who grow attached to content before it reaches the masses.
Corporations should be free to build support for content, but this strategy is increas-
ingly unspecific regarding the exact influence of consumer opinion.
Drawing on Amazon’s array of websites, press coverage, and company-provided
feedback forms, this article examines how the studio initially used discourses about the
significance of viewer feedback to overcome its marginalized status within the televi-
sion industry. The viewer-centric campaign served to drive buzz for Amazon’s previ-
ously unconsidered brand, to frame Pilot Season as an innovative disruption of the
conventional Hollywood development pipeline, and to legitimate streaming platforms
as important players in original series production. That these celebratory discourses
lacked reference to the specific impact of viewer feedback, and that they were quickly
Barker 443

reduced for familiar markers of Quality TV, indicates that Amazon used the allure of
participatory culture only to gain ground on its competitors, not to collaborate with
viewers. Furthermore, while Amazon asserts that viewers “call the shots,” my partici-
pation in Pilot Season demonstrates that the feedback itself is both minor and contradic-
tory. As such, the discourses surrounding Pilot Season exhibit that the industry’s ideal
version of viewer participation is quite casual and of vague influence. Pilot Season thus
serves as a case study of how the media industries publicly praise the value of feedback,
but rarely, if ever, explain how it matters. Finally, this case study shows that promo-
tional practices driven by quality are more important—and more effective—for the
industry than those centered on participation because they can be seamlessly folded into
pre-existing discourses (like critical reception and trade press chatter), and because they
function to legitimate television as a medium and as an industry.
Contemporary consumers have an ever-increasing number of entertainment options,
and a similarly growing control over the manner in which they access those options. For
television viewers, the popularization of video-on-demand set-top boxes, digital mar-
ketplaces, and streaming platforms means that thousands of programs are always avail-
able, and always delivered through personalized search results and curated watch lists.
For Jim Collins (2013, 654), the progressively personalized media ecosystem does
more than expand the options for nightly entertainment; he argues, “The multifunction-
ality of these devices—that they are simultaneously playback screen, private archives,
and portals to the Internet—has profound ramifications of how we make culture our
own and in the process determine the value of any particular text.” Referring to this
shift in mentalité as “playlisting culture,” Collins indicates that consumers craft a clear
personal identity through a vast, visible digital archive of their cultural obsessions.
The increase of personalized platforms has aided in the expansion of participatory
culture. Emphasizing an active spectatorship that contrasts with old notions of passive
consumption, Henry Jenkins (2006, 18) claims that participatory culture online per-
mits consumers to “bring the flow of media more fully under their control.” Consumers
are not just permitted to contribute in industry-controlled environments; they also
“participate in the production and distribution of cultural goods” (133). The activity of
these more empowered consumers produces a “bottom-up” agency that contradicts
with corporations’ more “top-down” practices. This growth of active consumption,
user-generated content, and collective, collaborative action has led to the populariza-
tion of terms like “produsage” (Bruns 2008), “produser” (van Dijck 2009), and “co-
creator” (Banks and Humphreys 2008), each of which underscores the supposedly
increased role “normal” consumers have in shaping professionally produced media.
If these triumphant discourses are credible, today’s television viewers are far more
empowered than their counterparts in the broadcast landscape that lasted through the
twentieth century. Writing about the byzantine Nielsen ratings methodology, Eileen
Meehan (2005, 246) identifies three interlinked “markets” in television—markets for rat-
ings, for viewers, and for programs—all of which require the presence of “high quality
consumers.” For Meehan, one problem with this system is how it disregards the majority
of the public audience. Nielsen tabulates a small representative sample to determine rat-
ings, the success of programs, and advertising rates. Meehan (1990, 119) suggests that,
444 Television & New Media 18(5)

instead of an accurate expression of viewership, Nielsen, advertisers, and the television

industry craft a “corporate ‘game.’” This game is powered by the “commodity audience,”
a manufactured group of viewers deemed valuable—that is, saleable—between the three
markets. Meehan (1990, 120) identifies a second problem with ratings systems: of their
promotion; she writes, “We are constantly told by the networks, advertisers, and ratings
monopolist[s] that free programming is a reflection of what we want, that scientific mea-
surements determine how people ‘vote’ on content, that programming is just a mirror of
public taste.” Simply put, with Nielsen, few viewers truly “count.”
The more diverse, participatory contemporary media landscape is supposed to give
viewers a clearer voice. Yet, despite the positive associations that these terms such as
produser or co-creator imply, it is crucial to acknowledge how proficient corporations are
at integrating the values of participatory culture into their promotional discourses.
Companies publicly suggest a willingness to allow consumers to collaborate, “inviting
them in” with promises of influence (D. Johnson 2007). These strategies allow the media
industries to appear as if they are “‘bestowing’ agency onto audiences, making their cre-
ative output meaningful by valuing it within the logics of commodity culture” (Jenkins
et al. 2013, 71). These “affective, engagement-seeking” marketing practices (Kozinets
2014, 162) are essential to maintain the attention of increasingly nomadic audiences with
a multiplicity of entertainment choices and to “discipline potentially disruptive new
media technologies that threaten established revenue streams” (Caldwell 2008, 274).
Although scholars have shown how media companies employ participatory dis-
courses when hoping to shape consumer response (Murray 2004), less discussed is
how corporations use these strategies when they lack market power altogether. By
encouraging consumer participation, companies tap into the power of “spreadability,”
potentially raising their profile in an instant (Jenkins et al. 2013). Moreover, as so
much of the consumer participation online is what Will Brooker (2014, 76) calls
“casual,” the media industries are able to easily facilitate this activity, and without
detailing how it operates. Although there is no universal consumer experience, this
casual participation raises concerns about exploitation. Consumers “willingly” offer
their labor in exchange for “the pleasures of communication and [social] exchange”
(Terranova 2000, 48). Participation allows consumers to be surveyed, as “it amounts
to the offer of convenience in exchange for willing or unwitting submission to increas-
ingly detailed forms of information gathering” (Andrejevic 2007, 4). Thus, although
consumers understand why the media industries solicit their feedback, this recognition
has not stopped corporations from publicly championing feedback and participation as
cornerstones of their business. Pilot Season, then, exemplifies how these discourses
circulate just enough to help companies build brand awareness.

“What Gets Made Is Up to You”: Pilot Season Promotional

Discourses
From the outset of the first Pilot Season in April 2013, Amazon Studios accentuated
the need for and utility of viewer feedback. As Price told USA Today,
Barker 445

One thing about having a customer-driven process is you can try more things and you can
be really open to new ideas and experimental ideas . . . I think we’re very comfortable
with a system that allows us to be very experimental and to respond to as much as possible
to customer preferences. (Keveney 2013)

Price situated viewer feedback as beneficial to the creative life of the prospective proj-
ects, stressing that the goal of Pilot Season was to align with viewer tastes. Likewise,
he told Wired,

The connectivity of the web and the reduced costs of producing films create opportunities
for people to do so much more in terms of creating entertainment and sharing their ideas
and getting feedback. There are millions of people out there who are . . . eager to look at
new things and share their opinions. (Tate 2012)

Here, Price keyed into the formation of “collective intelligence”—the “ability of vir-
tual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members” (Jenkins
2006, 26–27)—by implying that the sharing of ideas among and feedback from “mil-
lions of people” inherently improved professionally produced media. Certainly, Price
perpetuated these discourses with the hope that by courting viewers, he could inspire
them to watch the pilots and spread the word; Amazon’s attempt to turn viewers into
social media ambassadors was also visible on the Pilot Season website through two
prompts for action: “Rate. Review. Share. Tweet. #amazonoriginals” and “Share with
your friends.”
In interviews, Price often referred to viewers as “customers,” perhaps signaling that
he did not see them as true collaborators, but still regularly attempted to inspire
engagement. As Derek Johnson (2007, 63) argues, “Audiences are not just cultivated
as fans, but also invited in, asked to participate in both the world of the television text
and the process of its production.” An example of Price inviting viewers in came at the
launch of the second Pilot Season, where he said, “We’ll be very glad to be making
these decisions with Amazon customers at our side” (Jarvey 2014a). Price reinforced
that the feedback allowed the studio and viewers to cooperate; even the deployment of
“at our side” stressed a close proximity between the two groups. These invitations to
participate sought to produce a sociality that can sustain fan communities online.
Amazon also framed Pilot Season as an alternative to Hollywood’s typical develop-
ment practices. Price’s use of terms like “experimental” positioned it as a pioneer—
one that listened to the supposed “millions.” Speaking with TV Guide, he said,

The traditional process relies heavily on gut instinct. There’s something to that, but if you
could really get all your pilots out in front of all your customers, that would give you the
best answer. Often real game-changing shows defy conventional wisdom. (Schneider 2013)

Price thus suggested that the old method—the “traditional process”—is not the proper
way to develop series. Instead, the “best answer,” the way to find “game-changing
shows,” is to “defy conventional wisdom” and let viewers make the decisions. Producer
446 Television & New Media 18(5)

Michael London and Pilot Season hopeful Transparent (2014–) creator Jill Soloway
gave voice to industry professionals who recognized the value of the participatory pro-
cess. In a press release announcing the first Pilot Season, London said, “Amazon is
giving us a chance to work outside the TV bureaucracies and connect directly with
audiences hungry for original content” (Amazon Studios 2013b). A year later, Soloway
offered similar sentiments: “In the past, when I’ve made pilots, there’s always this
phantom testing. This is really a way for people to see it and decide if they like it for
themselves” (Jarvey 2014a). Like Price before them, London and Soloway strategically
pitted industry norms against “the people.” These comments exemplify the “marketing
of interactivity,” in that they provided an “explicit critique of the market for not being
democratic enough” (Andrejevic 2007, 27). In this case, Pilot Season served as a demo-
cratic alternative to Hollywood’s so-called “bureaucracies” and “phantom testing.”
These are far from new strategies. Clearly, Amazon hoped that by promoting Pilot
Season as novel and participatory, it would “sustain . . . various types of audience
conversations,” build “particularly strong ties,” and motivate viewers “to be even
more active in seeking and sharing new information” (Jenkins et al. 2013, 143).
Nonetheless, while the studio affirmed the power of viewer feedback, it cunningly
chose not to describe the specific influence of that feedback. Price said that it “seemed
natural to reach out to our customers,” but also declared that the process would “not be
as simple as American Idol where whomever gets the most texts or votes wins”
(Schneider 2013). The Pilot Season website created further confusion, with three slo-
gans that implied divergent levels of influence. “Call the shots” suggested full control,
with viewers called upon as co-creators. Meanwhile, “You help decide which shows
become series” promised a less active role, one that might be collaborative, but not
entirely within viewer control. Finally, “Your opinion matters” was perhaps the most
fitting slogan, as it assumed some type of participation without detailing anything
specific. These examples show that though the studio did not promise that viewers
would sway its decisions, it certainly went out of its way to assert that they could.

“Your Opinion Matters”: Feedback and Participation in

Pilot Season
Amazon’s lack of disclosure regarding the role of viewer feedback was not surprising.
However, to try to better understand the viewer experience, I offered my own feedback
to three 2014 Pilot Season projects: Transparent; Bosch (2014–), a police drama based
on a Michael Connelly book series; and The After (2014), a serialized sci-fi tale from
The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002, 2016–) creator Chris Carter. The surveys were intro-
duced in an illuminating fashion: “This short survey should take you no more than 5
minutes per show to complete.” Although substantive feedback could be given in under
five minutes, that allotted time did not match the discourses about the scope of viewer
participation. With this time commitment in mind, the surveys were predictably brief.
The first three—and only required—questions were of a multiple choice variety, with
sample possible answers relying on a sliding scale from “excellent” or “definitely will
Barker 447

Figure 1.  Pilot Season surveys (screenshot).

recommend” to “poor” or “definitely will not recommend.” As Figure 1 shows, the

second batch of optional questions featured free response prompts—“What are two or
three things you liked best/least about this show”—and a list of “aspects” to be rated on
the excellent-to-poor scale. For instance, aspects for Bosch included “the suspense,”
“the music,” “the beginning,” and “the ending.”
My participation demonstrated that feedback was easy to complete and generic in
scope, with little room for detailed praise or critique. Likewise, the list of aspects fea-
tured a range of disconnected and poorly defined categories. Although it was easy to
rate music or special effects, aspects such as “the look and feel of the show” were far
more ambiguous. Given Amazon’s interest in algorithms, it is likely that the surveys
solicited excellent-to-poor answers as to turn feedback into a searchable data set.
Price’s comments were revealing here: “You have simple metrics like how many peo-
ple watched it and reviewed it, what their average rating was and what the reviews said
448 Television & New Media 18(5)

substantively . . . There’s going to be a lot of data” (Schneider 2013). The emphasis on

“data,” “metrics,” and “average rating” affirmed the notion that viewers’ “role as a
data provider is infinitely more important than his role as a content provider” (van
Dijck 2009, 49).
Again, it is worth stating that Amazon’s strategies are not exceptionally novel.
The media industries have long employed an array of test screenings, focus groups,
and surveys to garner consumer feedback. These processes can be similarly brief and
unspecific, with participants evaluating projects by completing short questionnaires
or turning a real-time dial that assigns scores from zero to 100. Like in Pilot Season,
feedback given in test screenings or focus groups is translated into sortable data
points that may or may not be used to reconfigure the project in question. Nonetheless,
normal industry market testing and Pilot Season differ in two key ways. First, many
focus groups or pilot testing events involve compensation for the consumers (gener-
ally less than $100). Pilot Season participants, meanwhile, are not compensated for
their feedback, and can only see future episodes if they subscribe to Amazon’s Prime
Instant Video service. Second, the degree of promotion for Pilot Season far exceeds
that of the normal Hollywood test screening. Amazon flooded numerous platforms
with advertising material, telling viewers their input was not only wanted, it was
needed. Although the provision of feedback in Pilot Season is not “work” in the
traditional sense, viewers dedicated time to “defining and fixing cultural and artistic
standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and more strategically public opinion”
(Lazzarato 1996, 137). That Amazon heavily publicized the value of viewer feed-
back but did not compensate viewers for this labor, or acknowledge its impact,
stands as minor exploitation.
In late March 2014, Amazon announced series orders for six pilots from the second
edition of Pilot Season. Price predictably praised the breadth and depth of viewer feed-
back: “[D]ouble the number of customers watched these pilots compared to our first
season and they posted thousands of heartfelt reviews with pleas for us to continue
these shows” (Coming Soon 2014). Of course, he chose not to reveal any specific data
supporting these claims, nor did he explain the degree of influence of the “heartfelt
reviews.” The strategy still paid off. Amazon’s promotional discourses strived to
accentuate its participatory feedback processes, but publications’ willingness to circu-
late those discourses played just as meaningful a role in establishing the supposed
power of that feedback—and in legitimating the studio as an industry upstart. Headlines
like “Amazon: Vote for Shows You Want Us to Make” (Keveney 2013) demonstrate
how trade presses “invoke modernist notions of ‘cutting-edge’ originality, innovation,
and radicality to promote progress in their respective industries” (Caldwell 2008, 277).
The press framed Pilot Season this way to build a narrative about technology compa-
nies “disrupting” Hollywood amid declining ratings and increased attention to stream-
ing platforms. Slate (Thomas 2013) suggestively asked “Can Amazon Transform
TV?” while Variety (Atkin 2012) labeled Price a “Disrupter . . . Rocking the Business
of Content Production, Distribution, and Consumption.” These stories framed Amazon
Studios’s practices as an innovative break with the industry’s past, with viewer feed-
back playing a vital role in that break.
Barker 449

The Echo Chamber of Quality TV Discourse

Although the attention paid to Amazon’s encouragement of viewer feedback by the
press did not, on its own, establish the studio’s standing, it certainly aided in creat-
ing buzz that the studio then used to attract higher profile talent for the second Pilot
Season. Unlike the first Pilot Season’s emphasis on affordable live-action and ani-
mated comedies, February 2014’s second edition presented a mix of comedies and
dramas from more recognizable stars. Included among this group were Soloway’s
Transparent, a dramedy about a patriarch who “comes out” as transgender late in
life; and Mozart in the Jungle (2014–), a comedy following the New York orchestra
scene from Academy Award nominee Roman Coppola. The second Pilot Season
also included Amazon’s first hour-long dramas in Michael Connelly’s Bosch and
Chris Carter’s The After. Although promotion for the second Pilot Season still
acknowledged the importance of viewer feedback, it also made more room for the
notable names now affiliated with the studio. The press release announcing the
second Pilot Season cited viewer feedback in its first line, before transitioning to a
list of “creative talent” and “star-studded casts” (Amazon Studios 2014). This sub-
tle shift represented Amazon’s march toward other familiar industry discourses—
those of Quality TV.
The goal of defining Quality TV’s characteristics has long structured debates in
television studies. Robert J. Thompson (2007) identifies the “Quality TV aesthetic”
made up of particular textual conventions, including large ensemble casts, a multi-
tude of interwoven plotlines, sociocultural awareness, and a sense of artistry that
has, historically, been associated with film. Meanwhile, Jane Feuer (2007, 147) has
suggested that “quality” primarily describes the demographic makeup of the audi-
ence, in that a “quality audience means delivering whatever demographic advertis-
ers seek, or . . . attracting an audience with enough disposable income to pay extra
for TV.”
Yet, the most effective analyses of Quality TV demonstrate how networks deploy it
discursively as a component of branding strategy. This conceptualization of Quality
TV not only accepts both Thompson’s textual characteristics and Feuer’s audience
demographics but also underscores how promotional discourses link the two together.
For instance, though HBO’s famous “It’s Not TV, It’s HBO” slogan positions the chan-
nel against the entirety of the “vast wasteland,” its promotional discourses accentuate
certain characteristics of production—narrative complexity, enormous casts, immacu-
late production design—that reach the treasured 18–49 demographic. In this form,
Quality TV is a “marker” of differentiation that connects to the text, but primarily
functions discursively (McCabe and Akass 2007, 3). Deborah Jaramillo (2002) and
Catherine Johnson (2007) illustrate how HBO employed Quality TV discourses to
validate its programs, and to legitimatize pay cable as a home for original series. One
can identify similar trajectories for FX, AMC, and Netflix; this combination of Quality
TV as a type of programming and as a type of discourse has been historically success-
ful in launching pay cable, basic cable, and now streaming video as appropriate desti-
nations for prestige television.
450 Television & New Media 18(5)

In addition, while numerous companies have used Quality TV branding on their

own, we must again recognize the function of the press in fortifying these discourses.
Those covering the television industry are just as invested in promoting the progress
of the medium, in an attempt to place it in the same cultural category as cinema or
literature. As Michael Z. Newman and Elena Levine (2011, 7) claim,

It is primarily cultural elites (including journalists, popular critics, TV creators and

executives, and media scholars) who have intensified the legitimation of television by
investing the medium with aesthetic and other prized values, nudging it closer to more
established arts and cultural forms and preserving their own privileged status in return.

Hence, networks and the press cooperatively circulate Quality TV discourses, legiti-
mating one another, and television as an art form, in the process. Writing about the
“echo chamber” surrounding HBO, Christopher Anderson (2009, 38) argues that the
channel’s promotion of auteurs and intricate character studies aided in the expansion
of television criticism, which in turn further solidified HBO as a creative force. This
echo chamber did not begin with HBO’s rise to prominence. However, it has expanded
over the last few decades, helping others follow in HBO’s footsteps using comparable
strategies. Likewise, although this echo chamber allowed Amazon to “arrive” through
participatory-focused discourses, just a hint of the conventions of Quality TV inspired
the trade press and critics to reframe the narrative.
Predictably, the increased presence of high-profile talent and a wider array of pro-
gramming for the second Pilot Season inspired a more positive response from the trade
press and critical community, helping Amazon Studios take another step toward legiti-
macy. Instead of headlines highlighting the crowdsourced nature of the feedback, the
press celebrated its “big step forward” (Adalian 2014), and how the “latest pilots are a
cut above its last batch—and most other pilots” (Adams et al. 2014). For critics, this
step forward derived from the venture into dramatic programming and the presence of
creators with a pedigree like Soloway, Connelly, and Carter.
The critical response to Transparent was an especially transformative moment.
Critics immediately took to the pilot, particularly for how it represented the nuances of
transitioning. Citing its “authenticity and specificity,” Slate (Paskin 2014) called
Transparent “an honest to goodness great pilot that feels—and I mean this as a compli-
ment—exactly like one of those HBO shows with a 1-to-1 ratio of viewers to think
pieces.” Although Transparent garnered the lowest star rating among viewers, it was
still ordered to series (Spangler 2014a). This decision confirmed that viewer response
was not the key component of a project’s survival; instead, it verified that majority
viewer opinion would not invalidate the attention brought on by critical acclaim.
Moreover, the response to Transparent spurred Amazon to shift its promotional dis-
courses further away from viewer feedback and toward markers of Quality, including
the presence of auteurs, the creative freedom granted to each production, and associa-
tions with independent cinema and other forms of “high art.” Although this shift in
strategy did not entirely erase the role of the viewer, it tapped into discourses that the
press was already beginning to circulate.
Barker 451

“More than a Television Show”: Amazon Studios’s Shifting

Strategy
Amazon’s Quality TV discourses began in earnest in March 2014, soon after it
announced the series orders for the second Pilot Season projects. In an interview, Price
reaffirmed the critical adulation for Transparent, calling it “very distinctive,” and
gushed about the “real vision” of creator Jill Soloway. Price also asserted that it “was
very important to have [Bosch’s] Michael Connelly involved every day in the produc-
tion and planning and postproduction” and that working with Chris Carter “brings a lot
of expectations” from The X-Files fan community (Jarvey 2014c). This language
underscored the prized presence of the “showrunner-auteur,” a figure that draws atten-
tion to the artistic status of television as an authored text (Newman and Levine 2011,
39). The showrunner-auteur functions as a fundamental indicator of Quality TV, and
the constant discursive reinforcement of the role’s significance is “central to the shap-
ing of the popular imagination of television as a newly respectable medium” (55).
Here, Soloway, Connelly, and Carter were positioned as the voices pulling Amazon
Studios toward legitimacy.
Another component of typical Quality TV discourses is the artistic freedom granted
to the showrunner-auteur by the “respectful” network. It is not enough for the show-
runner-auteur to be identified as the sole author of the series—this figure must also
have clear creative autonomy. Michele Hilmes (2002, 305) notes that Steven Bochco
ushered in “one of the most creative periods in traditional broadcasting” in the 1980s
due to “a greater degree of creative control over the programs than they [writer/pro-
ducers] had before.” Despite Hilmes’ analysis of Bochco’s work on broadcast, dis-
courses about creative freedom are more regularly tied to cable, whether it is HBO
encouraging showrunner-auteurs like David Chase (The Sopranos [1999–2006]) to
tell stories not permitted on broadcast airwaves, or FX giving Kurt Sutter (Sons of
Anarchy [2008–2014]) unlimited episode time on the less rigid programming schedule
of basic cable. Generally then, discourses about autonomy function to establish the
showrunner-auteur, but also strive to legitimate non-broadcast television models of
production.
Expectedly, discourses concerning the creative autonomy granted by Amazon
appeared alongside those highlighting the presence of showrunner-auteurs. At the July
2014 Television Critics Association Press Tour, Transparent star Jeffrey Tambor spoke
to the superiority of the work, calling it “the most transformative experience” of his
career. Co-star Gaby Hoffmann shot down the claim that the cast and crew were exchang-
ing lower pay for artistic freedom, saying “This notion that we’re making some sort of
sacrifice for Amazon, it’s completely false. I would have done this show for no pay . . .
It is 100 percent a privilege” (Deadline Team 2014). In a later interview, Soloway forti-
fied her cast’s assertions about autonomy: “This has been absolutely the least amount of
interference . . . than anything I’ve ever done” (Spangler 2014b). With these statements,
Transparent’s cast and showrunner-auteur labeled Amazon as a respectful partner that
afforded them the space to freely make their program. In doing so, Tambor, Hoffmann,
and Soloway marked Transparent as Quality TV, and solidified Amazon as a genuine
452 Television & New Media 18(5)

destination for television production. Most importantly, references to viewer feedback,

or its role in making Transparent so exceptional, were absent in these discussions.
Amazon’s reformed discourses also sought to differentiate the studio’s content
from the rest of “normal” television. When asked about the decision to release all epi-
sodes of Transparent at once, Soloway praised the move, noting “I think of it like a
five-hour movie more than 10 episodes.” Executive Joe Lewis reinforced this charac-
terization, saying,

It’s novelistic; it’s not episodic. We’re actually getting to make up this new form of
storytelling as we do it . . . We need to figure out a new word for it—it’s not film, and it’s
not TV. (Ng 2014)

Although Transparent is not technically a television series, it certainly mimics the

format and style of one. However, during the series’ big coming out party, Soloway
and Lewis distanced themselves from the medium to which their project ostensibly
belongs. This talking point reappeared later in 2014, as Jay Chandrasekhar, star of
third Pilot Season project Really (2014), told Variety, “It’s almost like they’re creating
a new independent film scene” (Weinstein 2014). These efforts to distinguish Amazon
from the rest of television mirror HBO’s “It’s Not TV” slogan, which draws upon a
kind of exclusionary discourse that speaks to high culture in attempt to reach valued
audience demographics (Feuer 2007). According to these comments, Amazon pro-
grams are novelistic, like independent film but also not at all like film, or something
else entirely—but definitely not television. Yet, in detaching itself from television,
Amazon also demonstrated that this exclusionary discourse is part of a long tradition
of promotional practices.
After the Television Critics Association panel, Amazon hustled to shift the prevail-
ing discourse from the focus on feedback to discussions of the projects themselves.
Predictably, the press was again willing to spread this message, not only in giving
Price and company the opportunity to speak in familiar Quality TV discourse, but also
in writing stories about the momentum catalyzed by Transparent and the second Pilot
Season (Spangler 2014b). In August, QZ penned a story about Amazon “finally chal-
lenging Netflix” (Lynch 2014). Similarly, a late September Variety report identified
the studio’s new “core principle”: “pick the right projects and get out of the way.” This
story referred to the feedback process as a “pilot-bakeoff,” with no mention of the
viewers who were previously so important (Spangler 2014b).

“Call the Shots”: Conclusions on Pilot Season

In September 2014, Amazon faced a crossroads, as it introduced both the third Pilot
Season and the full season of Transparent. The studio indeed made a genuine effort to
balance the previously prominent participation-focused discourses with the emergent
Quality TV discourses. In the press release announcing the new pilots, Price struck this
balance: “Our first pilot season of 2015 brings some of the greatest storytellers in the
business to Amazon customers with works of novelty and passion. We’re very excited
Barker 453

by these shows and look forward to getting customers’ reactions” (Lewis 2014). On
Twitter, Amazon highlighted the new prospects and again invited viewers to offer their
feedback, retweeting “normal” viewers recounting their participation. Yet, once
Transparent became available, the studio’s tweets moved to publicizing the wave of
positive reception to the series. In choosing to occasionally retweet regular viewers in
support of the feedback procedures while selecting stars and lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) allies like Ellen Page and Jane Lynch to vouch for
Transparent, Amazon implicitly privileged one type of discourse—and one type of
viewer—over another. These tweets insinuated that Transparent is so good that indus-
try professionals could not help but watch and tweet immediately.
At this stage, the Pilot Season website underwent a makeover of its own. Although
still claiming that viewers could “call the shots,” the slogans were suddenly and visi-
bly marginalized. Meanwhile, more detailed descriptions of the new offerings and
their associated auteurs, and larger photos of the various stars, took on new promi-
nence. Instead of underscoring the utility of viewer feedback, the updated website
highlighted that new Pilot Season offering Red Oaks (2014–) was “Produced by Steven
Soderbergh,” despite the writer/director’s loose association with the project (see
Figure 2). These maneuvers are subtle, but telling; they reflect an Amazon that is less
concerned with its status within the industry, one that is confident in its ability to select
projects that speak to a particular audience, and one that is no longer in need of feed-
back-driven discourses.
It is impossible to know exactly how Amazon initially considered viewer feedback,
or if those considerations have changed over time. However, we do know that the
studio asked for generic and unspecific feedback, and that it shifted promotional tac-
tics at the first sign of critical acclaim. This suggests that the studio used participatory
culture to make a splash within the industry, a strategic move that it then discarded
when a more valuable option appeared. The transition to promotional discourses that
were more likely to be circulated by the press indeed raised the studio’s profile in a
way that viewers “calling the shots” never could.
As discursive strategies, participatory culture and Quality TV are not diametrically
opposed, but the progression of Amazon’s promotional work suggests that they serve
distinctive functions, and that the television industry imbues them with different val-
ues. The discourse of Quality TV is simply too appealing to trade presses and the criti-
cal community, as it works to legitimate television as an industry, a medium, and an art
form. Conversely, this case demonstrates that much of the industry—from studios to
the trade press to talent—often sees viewer feedback and participatory culture as a
gimmick, or a way to gain much-needed attention, not a legitimate form of engage-
ment with consumers.
Nonetheless, the impact of this strategy cannot be undersold. Amazon convinced thou-
sands of viewers to watch its content and provide their minor—yet not unmeaningful—
labor and then chose not to reveal any specific information about the effect of this
labor. As such, though I recognize that participants chose to provide feedback and
surely enjoyed doing so, it is difficult to see viewer feedback as a legitimate form of
participation. Access to media content does not automatically enable consumers to
454 Television & New Media 18(5)

Figure 2.  Pilot Season website, early 2014 versus late 2014 (screenshots).

participate in the decision-making processes related to that content. Instead, viewer

labor was “managed” (D. Johnson 2007, 76) by the studio; Amazon gave away content
for free hoping that it could convince viewers to pay for it later. These viewers, then,
were eventually asked to pay a “price premium for the fruits of their own labor”
(Zwick et al. 2008, 180), while the studio reaped the financial benefits.
Notwithstanding a self-celebratory discourse of “disruption,” Pilot Season relies on
patented media industry strategies. Modern consumers may have more options and
access than ever, but corporations like Amazon continue to piggyback on those
advancements to imply broader changes to feedback and participation. The Internet,
social media, and participatory processes like Pilot Season are seemingly positioned to
rectify some of the challenges presented by enigmatic representative sampling ratings
systems and broadcasting—and companies spearheading these new platforms and ini-
tiatives certainly claim to offer a kind of modern solution. However, instead of
Barker 455

offering a viewer-driven revolution, Pilot Season and similar feedback systems merely
shift the problems of Nielsen to a different medium. More viewers can participate in
Pilot Season, but their input data are part of a similarly confidential system “run by
magic numbers, numbers that shape content, creation, and availability” (Meehan 1990,
119). In fact, Pilot Season is even more problematic due to Amazon’s initial insistence
that it represents something better and more engaging for viewers. Instead, Pilot
Season offers a contradictory snapshot of viewer feedback, participation, and influ-
ence. On one hand, online video distribution and direct consumer access destabilize
Meehan’s three markets. For participants, the opportunity to provide any kind of feed-
back is an improvement that bypasses the influence of manufactured advertising rates
and ratings points. On the other hand, the dynamic Meehan describes has changed, but
only slightly. Pilot Season enables Amazon to collect viewing data and personal infor-
mation en masse without the hassle of representative sampling. Targeting specific
“high-quality” consumers—and ignoring others—is now very easy. No longer reliant
on advertisers to generate revenue, Amazon simply folds its production costs into its
retail business, and surely makes additional revenue by using data collected in Pilot
Season to sell future products to participants.
Ultimately, the media industries will continue to employ promotional strategies that
encourage viewer participation. These strategies are essential to attract and maintain
the attention of the fragmented audiences who have a multiplicity of entertainment
choices. For scholars, the challenge is not only to be aware of how corporations
encourage this participation from viewers but also to give further consideration to the
lack of disclosure regarding the influence or effect of this participation. We need to
recognize that the media industries’ calls for participation are not just sly branding
opportunities; they have secondary and tertiary goals that put corporate, economic
interests far ahead of influential viewer engagement.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

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Author Biography
Cory Barker is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana
University. His research focuses on the intersections of television and social media, and his
work has been published in Antenna, The Journal of Popular Culture Studies, and The Projector:
A Journal on Film, Media, and Culture.