How OG Netflixer Peter Friedlander Can Revitalize TV at ‘Miserable’ Amazon
The exec has goodwill and a tough remit as Prime Video's murky mission and misses sapped morale: “‘Citadel’ was our ‘Ishtar’”
I write about TV from L.A. and host The Ankler podcast. I wrote about the talent agency using an AI assistant, the microdrama boom and how Hollywood is muscling in. My Sellers’ Guides reveal what shows networks and streamers are buying. I’m elaine@theankler.com
Amid the chaos of the Jimmy Kimmel-FCC dustup (which we chronicled on The Ankler pod), you’d be forgiven for missing the news of a major shakeup at the top of a TV studio: Amazon MGM Studios global TV chief Vernon Sanders is parting ways with the company, which then snapped up Peter Friedlander just six short weeks after he stepped down as Netflix’s head of U.S. and Canadian scripted programming.
Friedlander, who held his most recent post at Netflix since 2021, spent a total of 14 years at the streamer. (Fourteen years! A veritable unicorn in the age of re-orgs and exec turnover.) He will now oversee Amazon MGM’s U.S. TV portfolio, as well as its global tentpole programming, MGM Television and MGM Alternative, said Amazon MGM Studios and Prime Video head Mike Hopkins in a memo to company staffers last Thursday. A few other names had been reported as possible candidates, including WBTV head Channing Dungey, former Blumhouse TV president Chris McCumber and WBTV ex-pres and newly minted microdrama exec Susan Rovner (though The Ankler has it on good authority that Rovner was not contacted about the role).
But let me tell you, folks are excited about Friedlander. “We love him!! Party going on over here,” one high-level TV lit agent — not a fan of Friedlander’s predecessor — texted me.
From the agents, producers, and Netflix and Amazon executives, past and present, who spoke to me over the last few days, I so far haven’t heard a bad word about Friedlander. His move brings to Amazon MGM the stirrings of a new era at the TV division, a place where, as my colleague Lesley Goldberg reported in April, “everyone’s afraid of their own shadow.”
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While Amazon’s Prime Video has had recent successes with Dad TV-style shows like Reacher and The Terminal List, Emmy-nominated genre series Fallout and The Boys, and YA breakouts like The Summer I Turned Pretty, the studio-streamer has also been plagued by complaints of creative red tape, an overly complicated organizational structure, skepticism over the leadership of now-former TV studio chief Jen Salke, and pricey flops like the Russo Brothers’ Citadel.
It will now be Friedlander’s job to tackle these issues, and by all accounts he’s well-suited to the task.
So in today’s Series Business, let’s dig into:
How the low-key Friedlander works with his team and TV creators
Who’s at risk inside Amazon as Friedlander figures out his exec team
Structural challenges ahead at Amazon for Friedlander as questions swirl about a previously planned re-org: “Why anyone would want that job?”
What he and OG Netflix colleague Cindy Holland, now atop Paramount streaming, have in common — and how their new era could change TV
The shows and talent he personally shepherded at Netflix
What Friedlander gives his creative teams that’s ever-rarer in Hollywood
What some Amazon MGM execs want him to change at their own studio
Hollywood hopes for his leadership at Amazon “in a time of conservative swings”