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Jen Salke’s Exit Won’t Fix Amazon’s Prime Video Problem
The streaming service’s identity crisis traces back to Seattle, not Hollywood.
It was July 2018, and Jen Salke — barely five months into her new gig running Amazon Studios — found herself sitting on a ballroom stage in Beverly Hills gamely taking questions from a roomful of reporters, myself included, gathered for the semiannual TV Critics Association press tour. And while this setup is no doubt great for Amazon’s bottom line — the company gets a healthy cut when you sign up for Max or Acorn TV via Prime or when you rent a new release through the app — it’s a lousy way to build brand loyalty for your own streaming service, and it made it harder for Salke to get eyeballs on her projects. A few months before Bezos tapped Salke to be his Hollywood player, The Wall Street Journal ’s Ben Fritz and Joe Flint penned a blistering takedown of the company and then-leader Roy Price (the guy who would soon be pushed out in the wake of sexual-harassment allegations).
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