Amazon Prime Video interested in syndicating its most expensive shows

Of course, the price has to be right. “We would want premium pricing because it’s a premium product. Season one of The Rings Of Power was the biggest TV series premiere in the history of Prime Video and season two was the most-watched returning season ever on Prime Video at the time,” ​​Chris Ottinger, Amazon MGM Studios’ head of worldwide distribution said. “Ultimately, it depends on the partner and where they plan to place it. If someone wants it for Thursday at 8 p.m.—a prime slot—I expect top dollar.”

Quality aside, this list includes two of the literal most expensive shows of all time, made exclusively for Prime Video and presumably intended to lure in more subscribers. But apparently, Prime has tested licensing its content to third parties, and doing so didn’t cannibalize viewership. In fact, Ottinger says that “The effect we saw was neutral to positive for Prime Video.”

Of course, this is just another example of streaming reinventing the wheel—in this case, the concept of reruns. More and more, streamers have been experimenting with licensing content to other streamers or airing streaming shows on broadcast. Last year, an exec admitted that the “dirty little secret” of streaming is that the money lies not in creating new shows, but in the valuable back catalogs that can be rented out to the highest bidder. Whatever Prime claims the viewership numbers of Rings Of Power and Citadel are, those shows irrefutably have a low cultural impact. If Prime can license them out and get a few more schmucks to care, it could be a return on the service’s very, very steep investment.