Former NBC News Anchor Brian Williams in Talks With Amazon to Lead Election Night Special
Former NBC News and MSNBC anchor Brian Williams is in talks to return to the anchor desk… at a surprising new home.
Amazon Prime Video is in talks with Williams to lead an election night special, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed. The special, if it comes together (a source cautions that talks are still ongoing and a deal may or may not materialize), would see Williams and a group of other contributors discussing the election results. The special would be non-partisan.
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Williams spent nearly three decades with NBC, where he was an anchor for NBC News and MSNBC. He led the flagship NBC Nightly News broadcast from 2004-2015, before stepping down after exaggerations and falsehoods were found in some of his reporting, including reports from Iraq and New Orleans after it had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.
He would go on to lead the 11 p.m. hour on MSNBC, before leaving the company entirely in 2021.
It’s a surprising foray into news from Prime Video, which has until now been focused on entertainment programming like Fallout and sports like the NFL and NBA. Of course, a one-off special is not the same as a fully fledged foray into news, but it is an intriguing step into the space. One source cautioned that the special is seen as a one-time thing and not necessarily a harbinger of future plans.
News does not have a long shelf life, like entertainment programming, and it does not draw in a mass audience like sports (election nights notwithstanding).
Still, streaming services owned by media companies that produce news have added programming in recent years. Both Paramount+ and Peacock have news programming from CBS and NBC, respectively, while Disney+ added ABC News programming earlier this month (Hulu has had it for years). Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max also added CNN programming last year, though it has pulled back on showing most CNN U.S. shows.
Variety first reported the talks.
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