Colin Jost hosting Pop culture in danger!
Photo: Vulture; Photo: Primevideo

A few months after taking his first big step into game shows with the Patton Oswald-hosted The 1% clubPrime Video is gearing up to quadruple the genre. Starting next month, the Amazon-owned streamer plans to launch four new game shows within seven weeks, from the Travis Kelce-hosted game show. Are you smarter than a celebrity? to a Danger! spin-off focused on pop culture and acquired by SNLis Colin Jost. While Prime’s focus on game shows is interesting in itself, it’s even more remarkable How the streamer plans to release and market these shows.

Taking a page from the days when broadcast networks drew millions with ‘Must-See TV’ Thursdays and ‘TGIF,’ Buffering has learned that Prime will drop new episodes of three of its new game shows at the same time each week, with the virtual programming block ‘Winning Wednesdays’. The goal: Create an opportunity for viewers – especially families – to open the Prime Video app weekly and find a complete evening of thematically similar entertainment.

While this is pretty much Linear TV 101, major streamers have mostly resisted such overt attempts to create weekly lineups. But Lauren Anderson, the Amazon executive overseeing Prime’s game show, argues there should be no shame in borrowing from the traditional TV playbook. “Increasingly, the line between what is broadcast and what is streamed is becoming incredibly blurred,” says Anderson, whose official title is head of brand and content innovation for Amazon MGM Studios. “A lot of customers like some of those patterns that have been developed on the broadcast side, even though they like the convenience of streaming.”

This isn’t the first time Amazon has been willing to break away from the streaming herd when it comes to release patterns and programming strategies. With the above 1%clubthe streamer struck a deal with Fox Broadcasting, which resulted in episodes of the series (initially intended as a Prime-only show) premiering on linear TV and then streaming hours later exclusively on Prime (but not on Hulu, where all other Fox primetime shows are live). ). And Prime sibling streamer Freevee is releasing new episodes of Judge Judy Sheindlin’s Judy Justice five days a week, Monday through Friday, mimicking the air pattern of her decades-long syndicated show.

“The same way we looked at Judy and said, ‘Yes, we can do daily programming,’ the same thought was about, ‘Okay, we do game shows and this is an opportunity to give customers something they want in a way they want,” says Anderson, adding that streaming programmers should be open to a wide range of release strategies: “The question I like to ask myself and that I want the team to ask is, ‘Why not?'”

Because this programming block approach is new to Prime – just like game shows, for that matter – Prime will be softening up its Winning Wednesdays launch, giving each of its new titles its own moment in the sun and experimenting a bit with how many episodes are dropped each week. Here’s how the rollout will work (check out a promo for the new lineup, including the first look at Pop culture in danger!below):

➽ Are you smarter than a celebrity? will be first out of the gate, arriving on Wednesday, October 16 with a mini-binge release of the first three episodes. A new episode will premiere every Wednesday until mid-February (for a total of twenty). The series offers a twist on Fox’s hit mid-aughts quizzer Are you smarter than a fifth grader? by placing one contestant in a “classroom” with five famous people from the worlds of comedy, sports and entertainment, including Nikki Glaser, Nicole Byer, Chad Ochcocinco and Lala Kent.

➽ Two weeks later, on October 30, Prime premieres Buy it nowa Shark Tank-like hybrid reality/game show hosted by JB Smoove in which various entrepreneurs are given the opportunity to pitch their products, first to a studio audience and then to a rotating panel consisting of Amazon executives and famous entrepreneurs such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Anderson and Christian Siriano. Winning entrepreneurs will be added to a ‘Buy It Now’ store on Amazon (synergy!), while one contestant per episode will also receive a $20,000 cash prize. After a three-episode premiere, new episodes will roll out weekly through January 8.

➽ Just before Thanksgiving comes, on November 20th Wishlist gameshalf an hour organized by The Masked Singer‘s Nick Cannon that pits contestants against each other in a series of over-the-top games and challenges. The Prize: Everything on the entrant’s Amazon Wish List (up to $25,000). Unlike the other titles in the Prime game show lineup, Wishlist games will stream all five episodes at once, serving as a holiday event of sorts.

➽ The final and perhaps largest part of the ‘Winning Wednesdays’ puzzle will be released on December 4 with the premiere of Pop culture in danger! Teams of three compete against each other tournament-style in the spin-off of the long-running syndicated quizzer, with Jost as host. Prime has ordered a whopping 40 episodes of the new one Danger!allowing three new episodes to premiere every week through February.

Photo: Primevideo

Once the new incarnation of Danger! debuts, Prime’s Winning Wednesdays will be completely filled with five episodes of three different gaming/competition shows releasing weekly, essentially replicating the feel of a broadcast network’s primetime lineup, but for a streaming audience. Interestingly enough, Anderson says that she and her team didn’t come up with the idea of ​​creating a game show block until well after the shows were in production. “It wasn’t intentional,” she says. “They were all produced on different cycles and schedules. But when we got them in, we said, ‘Oh, this would be great.’ We really wanted to plant a flag.”

Anderson, who credits Prime’s planning team with coming up with the throwback approach to releasing the show, said she thinks rolling it out under the broad banner of “Winning Wednesdays” could help them stand out. It also helps that, unlike scripted shows where eight or ten episodes have become the norm, game shows can still produce many episodes at a cost-effective price. “You can do fun, interesting and different things if you have enough episodes to play with,” says Anderson.

While the ability to produce a lot of episodes fairly cheaply played a role in Prime’s decision to delve into game shows, Anderson says the historical popularity of quizzers with TV audiences was a bigger motivation. “It’s one of these genres that has been around for a while, and continues to exist, because people love it,” she says, noting that older game shows do well on Amazon’s Freevee platform, which features content from game show networks Buzzr and GSN. And the fact that games are generally family-friendly makes it easier to reach a wider audience and enjoy intergenerational co-viewing, more important than ever now that Prime Video is an ad-supported service by default. “Game shows are so big,” Anderson explains. “People love them, and they’re fun for the whole family. All choices I make are always primarily determined by: ‘What is the audience responding to?’.”

While it’s too early to say whether the Winning Wednesdays block will continue with a new slate of game shows once these first four series reach the end of their first seasons in February, Anderson hints that this is possible, at least in theory. “There are other things coming on the other side of what we have already announced,” says. “But we also don’t want to get too ahead of the curve. We want to see how audiences respond to this, and then let that inform the planning of other game-adjacent content, including the reboot of American gladiators announced in June. That project, together with Are you smarter?is a direct result of Amazon’s purchase of MGM, and Anderson says there are other gaming and gaming-related shows from the legendary studio that the company is considering developing. “We are very excited about the library that has come to us with MGM,” she says.

Anderson’s excitement about game shows is also somewhat personal: The director says she still often watches old episodes of classic titles, especially those featuring celebrities of the day, such as The $25,000 pyramid. “I really enjoy looking back at the guests who were there and the conversations they had,” she says. “I like living in that space.” When asked by a game show-obsessed reporter if she’s done any research into reviving other classic formats, Anderson admits she’s done just that, citing the 1990s hit. Shop ’til you drop as one example.

Unfortunately, the realities of the TV business mean it’s not always easy to revive long-dormant titles. “Some of these things are a little complicated,” she says. “There are layers that even I find out about the rights. It is often a challenge. Even some of the shows we have Are do – it takes perseverance to get these things over the line. But I am nothing if not persistent.”