Amazon Halts 'Citadel' Franchise, Silently Admitting Failure

A few weeks ago, as we were busy gasping over Amazon Studios having to pay twice for the Bond franchise, it was noted how much Barabra Broccoli hated Amazon from the jump. She hated their ethos, their marketing plans, and perhaps most of all, their franchising of "IP" (Intellectual Property) into every medium possible. Multiple reports included a story about the head of Amazon's TV division, Jen Salke, sitting down with Broccoli to talk about "content" possibilities, only for Broccoli to come away profoundly offended that Bond was nothing more to the company than "content."

Up until last week, Salke was one of the few TV producers in the streaming space who hadn't been summarily fired for the service underperforming during the pandemic years; even though Wheel of Time failed to break out, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power was made a laughingstock due to it numbers-free announcements of "record audiences," and Citadel, the new "flagship Amazon series" somehow did far worse in viewership than either of the aforementioned struggling series. What happened to Good Omens was not her fault; it was just a shame that the show was one of Prime Video's first cult favorites; however, her inability to integrate MGM's library into the Amazon fold went far beyond Broccoli issues. 

But post-Double Bond payout, she suddenly discovered a somehow-never-before-mentioned desire to produce and abruptly left literally days before she was supposed to speak CinemaCon. So what does this mean for Amazon's Prime Video and MGM+? Is there no way out but up at this point?

Amazon has gotten away with being a messy disaster of this streaming service because, like Peacock with Comcast, there's a revenue stream that can treat all the losses as a write-off. Amazon's real money comes from its cloud computing service, which supports and hosts large swathes of the American internet, as well as multiple global sites and government-run frameworks. Not that most viewers even realize this; to them, Amazon is the Everything Store, and the streaming service they get "for free" with their yearly membership is a side benefit half of them didn't ask for and never use.

Considering Amazon boasts somewhere in the 200m subscribership range, it's remarkable how few of its shows make the Nielsen Top Ten, something that could be solved by someone doing something about the utterly horrific interface experience provided by the Prime Video site. (Do not get me started on Firesticks. Re-adding apps no one asked for after they've been removed should be illegal.) Apple TV+ at least has had the grace to be embarrassed by its lavish spending with little to show for it. Prime Video didn't seem to know that was an option.

All the Citadel foreign language spinoffs (even the ones that did non-poorly in their home countries) have been halted, and will not resume production until Citadel Season 2 is released, which sounds to me like a really good way to shelve the entire boondoggle without attracting too much notice. But the real question is if Prime Video's people have it in them to actually face the issues their service has an start solving them instead of thinking a single firing will fix it.