The latest foray into sports content from Amazon’s Prime Video service is…talk shows. Prime Video already has live sports rights with Thursday Night Football and the ONE Championship MMA promotion, and they’ve been doing plenty of sports documentaries as well. Now, they’re launching a Monday-to-Friday lineup of sports talk studio shows, which will feature hosts including Cari Champion and Master Tesfatsion and will be produced in conjunction with Sony’s Embassy Row (founded by Michael Davies of Men In Blazers, whose day job includes being the full-time executive producer for Jeopardy!). The lineup, launching soon (originally supposed to be Nov. 1, but pushed back) will run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., albeit with some of that being reruns and highlights. Here’s more on that from Andrew Marchand of The New York Post:
NEWS: Amazon will forgo the hot take and are going with more of "Moneyball" approach in betting mostly on up-and-comers as opposed to proven TV talkers. https://t.co/RDrG7MI7Du
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) October 31, 2022
Here’s the initial daily lineup, as per Marchand’s report. (All times Eastern.)
8 a.m. – 10 a.m.: Bonjour Sports Talk, with Madelyn Burke and Ben Lyons.
10 a.m. – noon: Bonjour Sports Talk replay.
Noon – 2 p.m.: The Cari Champion Show.
2 p.m. – 4 p.m.: Sports Talk Game Breakers, with Eitan Levine and Drexton Clemons
4 p.m. – 5 p.m.: From the Desk of Master T, with Master Tesfatsion
5 p.m. – 6 p.m.: The Power Hour, with Rennae Stubbs.
6 p.m. – 7 p.m.: The Greatest Hour of All-Time (GHOAT), highlights from the day’s programming.
7 p.m. – 8 p.m.: The Backup Plan, with Hana Ostapchuk and Jason Spells, a combination of highlights from earlier shows and sports and culture talk from the hosts.
The various shows are expected to soon be available on demand as well. Marchand got some notable quotes from Amazon exec Marie Donoghue on this approach, and why working with Davies was important for them:
“We talked to Michael a lot about this,” Marie Donoghue, Amazon’s vice president of Global Sports Video, told The Post. “We think there is an opportunity for new emerging voices and a positive, uplifting take on sports.
“We are dipping our toe. We’re testing and learning, but we are very excited about it.”
The shows will not feature any highlights.
“We want to push the talent and the producers to take this approach and have more deeper and interesting conversations,” Donoghue said. “Nothing is set in stone so we will iterate and adapt, but that’s how we want to go out.”
Marchand’s piece noted that the shows were initially set for a Nov. 1 debut, but then bumped back. When they do begin airing, in addition to Prime Video, they’re also expected to air on Amazon’s ” other audio and visual platforms.” That would seem likely to include Twitch. So if you’re not Dan Orlovsky and know how to use that platform, that might be an option to watch these as well. We’ll see how this foray into sports talk goes for Amazon.
[The New York Post; Prime Video logo via soda.com]
