Amazon is sniffing around at getting into the news business

It's not a secret that Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos has aspirations for the news as business: Bezos bought The Washington Post (for a big to us, miniscule to him, chunk of change) back in 2013, and stuck his thumb very prominently on the scale in the most recent election, smothering the paper's efforts to issue an endorsement of Kamala Harris. All of which hopefully explains the little chill that went down our spines today, at news that Amazon is looking to expand further into the news business itself.

This is per Variety, reporting that the relative success of the commerce giant/would-be media giant's election night coverage, anchored by Brian Williams, was big enough to get the company thinking about more such specials. The logic seems pretty straightforward: There are a lot of people like Williams out in the media ecosphere right now—nationally known faces with a critical confluence of availability, credibility, and bank accounts—and so tapping them to come together periodically for major news events is as easy as getting the checkbook out and making it happen. (The election night broadcast, which reportedly drew in roughly four million viewers, featured appearances from Shepard Smith, Poppy Harlow, James Carville, Candy Crowley, Don Lemon, Abby Huntsman, Jessica Yellin, Mark McKinnon, Douglas Brinkley, and Lydia Moynihan; Variety notes that it was basically the exact same "throw big names at the wall and see what sticks" approach the streamer adopted for its recent forays into sports coverage.)

The streamers have long struggled with how to tackle the news, traditionally both a solid revenue source and a point of pride for traditional networks. Sources quoted by Variety make it clear Amazon won't be building an entire reporting organization from basic parts, rather opting for a more piecemeal approach. (Although parts of its offerings include access to live feeds of other organizations, which could feed into a larger plan.) It's also clear from the numbers for the Williams special—which came in behind Fox News, but ahead of groups like CBS News, despite coming together at a relative late date ahead of the election—that there's eyeballs to be grabbed here. As to politics, it will shock nobody that all efforts will apparently be as deliberately anodyne and milk-hearted as possible: Variety quote two sources who state that "Like Williams’ special, the programs are expected to be 'down the middle of the road,' and take pains to avoid bias."