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With Golden Globes Win, Amazon Shakes Up Yet Another Industry

With Golden Globes Win, Amazon Shakes Up Yet Another Industry

By Emily Steel and Jonathan Mahler, The New York Times | Updated: 13 January 2015 10:31 IST

Among the usual names invoked during the acceptance speeches at Sunday's Golden Globes - Harvey Weinstein, Scott Rudin, Les Moonves - was an unusual one: tech billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon.

His company's streaming show "Transparent," a dark comedy about a family in which the father comes out as transgender, won the award for best television comedy or musical. The program's star, Jeffrey Tambor, took home the award for best actor in the category.

Clutching her golden trophy with two hands, the creator of "Transparent," Jill Soloway, thanked both Amazon and Bezos. Tambor called the company his "new best friend."

It was a remarkable moment, considering that only months ago Bezos and Amazon were being cast as the enemies of American letters. The company's long-simmering conflict with book publishers over e-book prices had broken out into open warfare, with Amazon going so far as to delay shipments of certain Hachette titles deliberately - a move that invited the collective wrath of the literary world. TV host Stephen Colbert directed an obscene gesture at Amazon on national television.

The juxtaposition says a lot about Amazon's unusual place in American culture. At the same time that the company was effectively engaged in a book blockade, it was producing what is now an award-winning series that tackles the ambitious subject of transgender people.

As surprising as the company's breakthrough success with "Transparent" may be, it is also consistent with its history and identity. Amazon is the first digital streaming service to win a Golden Globe for best TV series. In other words, the company that has changed the way consumers buy everything from diapers to high-definition TVs is disrupting yet another industry.

"What we've learned, which is kind of our theory from the beginning, is that you really have to go with passion," Roy Price, vice president of Amazon Studios, said hours after winning the award.

"Go with someone who is writing that script, not for the industry and not for other people, but the script that they love and that they are going to love to do," he added. "If you go with the talent and the passion, it will work out. That is the theory."

Golden Globes voters have always been careful to honor a wide-ranging group of winners, partly as a way to assure high-wattage attendance; still, the box score from Sunday reveals just how drastically the TV landscape has changed. All of the awards in TV categories went to first-time winners, with the big four networks coming away empty-handed.

Once dominated by the broadcast networks and a handful of cable channels, television is now a wide-open field. Any company with the resources to produce quality programming and a distribution platform can compete for viewers. And awards.

"For all of us who are in big broadcast television, you really admire when new voices break through," Nina Tassler, chairwoman of CBS Entertainment, said in an interview. "What it speaks to is the level of authenticity you get when people write from their own personal experiences."

Netflix, another streaming service that is now producing original content, was a winner as well. Kevin Spacey earned a best acting prize for his portrayal of the ruthless, calculating politician Francis Underwood in "House of Cards."

Showtime, too, had a big night. Its freshman series "The Affair," about the psychological effects of an affair between two married people, won the prize for best TV drama. One of its stars, Ruth Wilson, was named best actress in a drama TV series.

The little-known actress Gina Rodriguez won for best TV comedy actress for her role as Jane in CW's "Jane the Virgin," a whimsical, melodramatic adaptation of a Venezuelan telenovela. It was the first Golden Globe for CW, which was founded in 2006.

"It lends an enormous amount of credibility to your work," Mark Pedowitz, president of the CW, said in an interview before the awards show. "It says to the creative community, this is a place to be."

But the night's big winner was Amazon. Asked after the awards show what it was like working with the company, Tambor said it had "guts" and "taste." Soloway said she did not even know that "Transparent" would be nominated for TV awards when she started working with Amazon on the show.

Hollywood was initially skeptical about the tech company's decision to get into TV. When Amazon created its own studio group nearly five years ago, it tried to crowdsource programming. Rather than recruiting established talent, it solicited web submissions for scripts and posted TV pilots online, analyzing viewer feedback to decide whether to go forward with projects.

Amazon's original series appear on its Prime Instant Video streaming service and are included as part of its $99 Prime annual membership, which also includes free two-day shipping. The goal is to attract customers to the site to buy more products on Amazon - a very different business model from the rest of the subscription-driven, ad-supported television business.

Price, who has predicted that in a decade people will watch a stream of personalized videos rather than mass broadcasts, has said that the goal for Amazon's original series is not to produce megahits that appeal to huge audiences but rather projects that resonate powerfully with groups of people.

Its first batch of original productions made their debut in 2013 and generated little attention or acclaim. Critics complained about not knowing how to find the programs on Amazon's site. Only one of the adult-targeted shows in that set, the Washington-meets-frat-house comedy "Alpha House," was renewed for a second season.

In response, Amazon started to introduce programming with a more distinctive tone, cinematic quality and novelistic storytelling. It also lured bigger names and started paying more competitively, announcing that it would invest $100 million (roughly Rs. 621 crores) in original content during the third quarter of 2014.

"Transparent" and another well-received new series, "Mozart in the Jungle," about the behind-the-scenes drama of a symphony, are examples of this shift in strategy.

It is too early to judge Amazon's foray into original content a success. The company has approved a wide array of pilots; few have broken out as hits. And one progressive, award-winning series is not likely to quiet the company's critics. Though Amazon recently resolved its dispute with Hachette, resentment toward the company still lingers in the publishing industry.

"Amazon spent eight months sanctioning books and hurting thousands of authors," said Doug Preston, who wrote an open letter signed by more than 900 authors protesting the company's tactics. "This excellent show doesn't make Amazon a friend of creative content. Even Napoleon had some mighty fine-looking uniforms."

But on Sunday night at least, Amazon's battles with the book publishing industry were forgotten, and its TV executives vindicated.

"A couple of years ago, we were sitting at the El Pollo Loco, thinking that maybe we should develop some TV shows, and now here we are," Price said.

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