The Emmys Just Signed a Six-Year Lease on Amazon's Living Room
After decades of bouncing between ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, the Primetime Emmys found a permanent address: Prime Video. The ceremony stays free to watch, but the keys now belong to Amazon.
For the first time in the show's history, the Emmy Awards will stop rotating between broadcast networks and settle into a single home. The Television Academy and Amazon announced a six-year deal this week that makes Prime Video the exclusive home of the Primetime Emmys starting with the 79th ceremony next September, ending a decades-long arrangement that cycled the show among ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC.
The ceremony will still be free to watch, no Prime subscription required, according to Television Academy chairman Cris Abrego and Mike Hopkins, who leads Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. That detail matters: Amazon is not just buying distribution rights, it is buying the cultural real estate of awards season without asking anyone to pay for the privilege, at least not directly.
For a network ecosystem that has spent the last five years watching live events migrate to streaming one broadcast rights deal at a time, this is less a surprise than a formality. The real headline is that Amazon now owns the biggest night in television twice over, once with the prestige of hosting it, and once with the ad inventory that comes with it.
Source: Spectrum News 1
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
