The entire series won’t be shown on the livestreaming site — rather, it’ll just be the first episode of these shows. So no, Amazon won’t be cannibalizing its own business by pushing traffic to Twitch. Rather, pilots will only be viewable online in the platform for a day’s time — basically just enough of a teaser for viewers to decide if it’s worth actually watching the entire show back on Amazon.
It’s a bit unclear as to what the final goal of this new premiere strategy really is — maybe Twitch audiences will be the test case for how good a show is, or maybe Amazon is trying to prove that the platform can be used for more than just gaming. In any case, three pilots will begin streaming at the end of the month, so if you’ve been getting bored with your Hulu or Netflix queues, this may just be the time to tune into Twitch instead.
I Love Dick, a comedy series from Jill Soloway, is to set to star Kevin Bacon opposite Kathryn Hahn. Also slated for debut is action spoof “Jean-Claude Van Johnson,” which unsurprisingly (but maybe ironically?) stars Jean-Claude Van Damme. “We’re just trying to get more stuff to Prime members,”Joe Lewis, Amazon’s head of half-hour programming, told Variety about the new shows. “We’ve been pretty transparent that we’re trying to make great TV to get people to sign up for Prime. We’re never going to not make something that customers love.”
