Amazon Volunteers to Give Awards to Apple TV Now

Amazon’s Prime Video isn’t exactly known for its dominance at the Emmy Awards lately. Although Amazon earned 17 statuettes across its Prime Video and MGM Studios subdivisions, most of those wins were in craft categories and didn’t air on last night’s Primetime Emmys broadcast. But that doesn’t mean its Emmy ambitions are small: Amazon apparently wants to buy the rights to air the whole broadcast.

Prime Video is angling to take over the telecast of the Television Academy’s most important night, Variety and THR reported today. For 31 years, the Big Four broadcast networks rotated the rights to the telecast in a so-called “wheel deal” in which the show would jump between ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC. The most recent wheel deal ended with last night’s broadcast of the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on NBC and NBCUniversal-owned Peacock. If Prime Video and the TV Academy strike a new deal, they would follow the Oscars’ example as another major Hollywood awards show to move to shift off network TV.

Questions abound as to how this would work, and neither Amazon nor the TV Academy has commented on the matter as of yet. Technologically, Prime Video can certainly handle the “live” aspects of it all, as it has deals with several sports leagues — most notably the NFL — and has held rights to the Academy of Country Music Awards for five years. But how could the Creative Arts and Primetime ceremonies change in format or lineup on the streamer? Would they have the Reacher guy intimidate winners and nominees alike as host? Could making itself the show’s main streaming partner help out any of Amazon’s Emmys chances, or will this whole thing turn into Amazon handing awards to Apple TV every year?

Or could we see other Amazon attempts at synergy; last night, while watching live on Peacock, viewers were treated to marketing pop-up after marketing pop-up, prompting them to add shows like Traitors: New Blood or Law & Order: SVU to their streaming watch lists. Will “shop the look” buttons overtake the red-carpet feed? What else will mysteriously find its way into our Amazon carts after Prime’s first broadcast? And how much money could the TV Academy extract from Jeff Bezos’s platinum-lined pockets? Networks were apparently paying just over $8 million a year for the license under the latest wheel deal, per Variety. But this time, the TV Academy is negotiating with a $2.77 trillion tech company. Surely Bezos’s lieutenants can do better.