Review: 'Election Night Live With Brian Williams'

I am all in favor of streamers taking chances. But when I heard that Prime Video had selected former long-time NBC and MSNBC anchor Brian Williams to anchor a new one-off live election night special, I was more than a bit concerned. If you are a streamer and want to carve out a new audience, hiring an anchor who is the epitome of the traditional broadcast news establishment seems like a bad move. Williams is a talented and sure-footed anchor. But there is nothing about him that would lure me into turning away from one of the more traditional election night coverage options.

But because it's my job, I spent some time watching the show tonight and my most gracious take is that if feels like a high-budget YouTube live stream. There is a massive virtual wall, a huge open set and a lot of familiar cable news pundits, including James Carville and Mike Murphy. I'm sure it all looked great on paper. But the actual show is often awkward and clunky. Williams reads things off his phone, and because the show apparently doesn't have an analytics team, he spent much of the night passing along the results called by the AP and other networks. 



Williams has the ability to be almost unflappable, no matter how awkward the proceedings. But there were moments during the night when he looked as if he felt he was trapped inside some computer-generated representation of what the algorithm thinks a human-based show might look like.

I am no programming executive, but I am pretty sure that when viewers tune into a news show, no one wants their reaction to be "wow, this is really unsettling."