Brian Williams Goes Long on Talk in Amazon Election-Night Debut

Brian Williams didn’t come to election night to get news, but rather to collect it all.

The NBC News veteran began an interesting American experiment Tuesday night by taking to Amazon’s Prime Video to host a live hour-long election night special on the streaming giant’s massive platform. Williams got to use his gift of the gab, while his corporate benefactor got to experiment with fishing for audiences with broadcasts around significant live events that aren’t an NFL game or other sporting event.

“Election Night with Brian Williams,” made available for free to anyone who wanted to watch it — whether they had an Amazon Prime subscription or not — launched at 5 p.m., long before official coverage began on MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CBS News or ABC News, and just as CNN began looking at the evening’s first exit poll, NBC News took over its broadcast network for a 24-hour coverage session. Amazon plugged the live special directly from the top of its high-traffic website, ensuring it got the attention of Amazon shoppers.

“Election Night,” which was expected to run for at least eight or nine hours, is just one of a series of new-tech gambits aimed at reaching a younger generation of news viewers. CNN offered live vertical video in its app, providing special coverage for mobile audiences. NBC News launched a special “Kornacki cam” on its Peacock streaming service and MSNBC’s YouTube channel, allowing subscribers to focus closely on Steve Kornacki, best known for his interactive political maps and statistics.

There is increasing pressure to master digital tactics. About 86% of American adults say they sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, and 57% of this group say they do so often, according to analysis by the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who say they often get news from television has held steady at 33%.

Amazon has suggested it is not eager to enter the news business, but it appears interested in mastering live events. Rival Netflix is ​​also pushing into this venue, as are many of the broadcast networks, with Disney recently acquiring the rights to show the Grammys starting in 2027. Live performances are one of the few things that bring a big audiences together in a way that big advertisers crave, and with more streamers offering ad-supported tiers, it’s no wonder they’ll offer their fair share of such things. Sports are top notch, to be sure, but the games get very expensive.

Amazon made good use of Williams’ special. It took commercial breaks to run promotions for the many news apps it offered, for its new movie “Unstoppable” and for its carriage of expensive NFL games via “Thursday Night Football.” However, some of the ads that supported the program were of no better pedigree than those seen on Fox News, MSNBC or CNN on a typical evening. One spot came from Balance of Nature, the dietary supplement company that often runs direct-response ads on cable news.

Williams’ Amazon show featured dozens of contributors, some of them quite familiar to news audiences. One of them was Candy Crowley, the CNN political veteran who hasn’t been on much TV since leaving her Sunday morning show “State of the Union” in 2014. Crowley appeared Tuesday night to help analyze various voter attitudes. Abby Huntsman, the former Fox News host and panelist on ABC’s “The View,” played a major role in the show, as did CNN and ABC News veteran Jessica Yellin. Shep Smith, known for his long run at Fox News and short tenure at CNBC, was stationed at the headquarters of Vice President Kamala Harris. Poppy Harlow, who recently left CNN, appeared as a Paris correspondent and told Williams that “we kept the Eiffel Tower lit for you.”

What was missing? Many of the cool graphics that help the major TV networks pull through on election night. Williams’ screen was filled with, well, Williams and his guests and contributors. There were no scrolling chyrons at the bottom of the screen; no countdown clocks; no “key race alarms”; and no rotating blinkers look at voter turnout or turnout. And Williams was often shown with his back to the audience – once seen as a cardinal sin in news production – as he turned to chat with distant guests. Is the YouTube and TikTok generation more forgiving of such production nuances?

In fact, Amazon and Williams chose to do an election night show without access to a specific decision desk, which the host told viewers would force him to reach only one set of results, while many different polls and results would likely be debated by the public throughout the evening.

“We’re not saddled with a Decision Desk tonight,” Williams told the crowd. “We keep an eye on everything, so you only need to see us.” Other TV producers might want to take that line of thinking. At one point early in the evening, Williams cited CNN data as a new talking point for his panel.

However, the producers were keen to give viewers an alternative to the usual stuff. The show was more about explaining the news, according to a person familiar with the program, and not about being the first to call a race for a particular state. The producers were able to line up household names, this person added, helped by the fact that many traditional TV news competitors have trimmed the ranks of their contributors as financial pressures have weighed on them. The show, this person said, would aim to be big and accessible and provide a down-to-earth presentation.

The guests included all stripes of right and left. There were former Trump press advisers such as Hogan Gidley and Baratunde Thurston, the author and comedian.

But mostly there was talk. Williams had three handfuls of guests to juggle. He spoke to them. He spoke to the audience. He spoke to each panelist. He welcomed “newsmakers” like North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman (also Abby Huntsman’s father). The show opened with a blistering three-minute segment in which he addressed a letter to the nation’s founders to tell them how much life in these United States had changed.

Whether Williams gets to speak more for Amazon in the future may depend on how many viewers clicked in to hear his claptrap — and how long they stayed on a night filled with plenty of other news distractions.