Amazon had a unique process of deciding which Prime Video pilots would be picked up for a series. It asked viewers to vote on the pilots and the company would then decide on the series orders based on that democratic process. It’s doing away with it for now, though. Amazon has confirmed that it will no longer be taking votes from viewers to decide on Prime Video pilots.
Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke has said that the company has decided that the Prime Video pilot voting will be “set aside for now.”
This doesn’t mean that Amazon will stop requesting new pilots and picking them up for series. It’s not going to be basing that decision on votes from viewers for now. The company will rely on internal testing and “some user data” to make these decisions.
It’s not that Amazon doesn’t have faith in the voting system, the company appears to be questioning the efficacy of the entire pilot system. The concept of making conventional TV pilots have led to shows “taking way too long” to arrive on the platform, said Amazon’s Albert Chang.
Thus the idea here is to remove a step that’s causing new shows to take longer to arrive on the platform particularly when rivals like Netflix don’t go through the process and are capable of quickly bringing original content to their platforms.