“Great Shows, Thanks to You”: From Participatory Culture to “Quality TV” in Amazon’s Pilot Season

Abstract

Launched in 2013, Amazon Studios’s Pilot Season reportedly offers an alternative to the conventional Hollywood development cycle by soliciting viewer feedback through short surveys and star reviews to determine which projects are developed into original series. However, while Amazon Studios publicly assures us that viewers “Call the Shots,” the company has swiftly navigated away from such participatory discourse. Through a discursive analysis of promotional materials, executive and talent interviews, and responses from trade presses and critics, this article unpacks how Amazon Studios diminished the import of viewer feedback at the first sign of significant attention from the critical community and subsequently shifted to promotional discourses centered on markers of “Quality TV.” This case ultimately demonstrates that, as discursive strategies, participatory culture and Quality TV serve distinctive functions for the industry, with the former often relegated to attention-seeking gimmick and the latter functioning as a powerful tool of legitimation.