Brian Williams didn’t come to Election Night to break news, but rather to put it all together.
The longtime NBC News veteran kicked off an interesting American experiment Tuesday evening by taking to Amazon’s Prime Video to host an hours-long Election Night special that showed him using his gift of gab while his corporate benefactor got to experiment with fishing for audiences for broadcasts of live events that didn’t come in the form of an NFL match-up or other sports event.
“Election Night with Brian Williams,” made available to anyone who wanted to watch it — whether or not they held an Amazon Prime subscription — launched at 5 p.m., well before official coverage kicked off at MSNBC, Fox News Channel, CBS News or ABC News, and just as CNN began to look at its first exit poll of the evening and NBC News took over its broadcast network for a 24-hour-long coverage session.
The show is just one of a number of new-tech gambits aimed at reaching a younger generation of news viewers. CNN offered live vertical video in its app, offering special coverage for the mobile audience. NBC News launched a special “Kornacki-cam” on its Peacock streaming service, giving subscribers the chance to focus closely on Steve Kornacki, best known for his interactive political maps and statistics.
There is growing pressure to master digital tactics. Approximately 86% of U.S. adults say they sometimes get news from a smartphone, computer or tablet, with 57% of that group saying they do so often, according to analysis from Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, the number of Americans who say they often get news from TV has stayed steady at 33%.
Amazon has suggested it’s not eager to get into the news business, but it does seem interested in mastering live events. Rival Netflix is also pushing into this venue, as are many of the broadcast networks, with Disney recently snapping up rights to show the Grammys starting in 2027. Live spectacles are one of the few things that bring large audiences together in a way that big advertisers crave, and with more streamers offering ad-supported tiers, it’s little wonder they want to offer their fair share of such stuff. Sports is all the rage, to be sure, but the games are getting very expensive.
Amazon made good use of the Williams’ special. It seized upon commercial breaks to run promos for the many news apps it offered, for its new movie “Unstoppable,” and for its streams of “Thursday Night Football.” Some of the ads that supported the program, however, were no better than what might turn up on Fox News, MSNBC or CNN on a regular evening. One spot came from Balance of Nature, the nutritional 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. Candy Crowley, the CNN veteran who hasn’t really been on TV since leaving “State of the Union” in 2014, surfaced Tuesday night to help analyze different voter attitudes. Abby Huntsman, the former Fox News host and “View” panelist, played a large role during the evening, as did Jessica Yellin, the veteran of CNN and ABC News. Shep Smith, known for his turns on Fox News and CNBC, was stationed at headquarters for Vice President Kamala Harris. Poppy Harlow, who recently left CNN, turned up as a Paris correspondent, telling Williams that “we kept the Eiffel Tower lit for you.”
What was missing? Many of the gee-whiz graphics that help mainstay TV networks get by on Election Night. Williams’ screen was filled with , well, Williams and his guests and contributors. There was no scrolling chyron at the bottom of the screen; no countdown clocks, no “key race alerts” and no rotating flashes looking at voter percentages or turnouts. 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 remote guests. Is the YouTube and TikTok generation more forgiving of such production nuances?
Indeed, 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 hew to only one set of results while many different polls and outcomes were likely to be discussed by the public over the course of the evening.
“We are not encumbered by a Decision Desk tonight,” Williams told the audience. “We are watching everything so you need only watch us.” Other TV producers might take issue with that line of thinking. At one point early in the evening, Williams cited CNN data as a new talking point for his panel.
Producers were intent on giving viewers an alternative to the usual stuff, however. The show is aimed more toward explaining the news, according to one person familiar with the program. Producers were abele to line up well-known names, this person adds, aided by the fact that many traditional TV-news competitors have trimmed the ranks of their contributors as economic pressures have weighed on them. The show, this person says, would aim to be big and accessible and hew to a down-the-middle presentation.
Guests included all stripes of right and left. There were former Trump press advisers like Hogan Gidley, and Baratunde Thurston, the writer and comic.
But mostly, there was chatter. Williams had three handfuls of guests to juggle. He talked to them. He talked to the audience. He spoke to each on-set 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 windy three-minute segment in which he addressed a letter to the nation’s founding fathers to tell them how much life in these United States had changed.
Whether Williams gets to talk more for Amazon in the future may hinge on how many viewers clicked in to hear his patter — and how long they stayed on an evening filled with many other newsy distractions.
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