William’s environmental prize is reported to be moving to Amazon’s platform, the latest sign that the royals no longer assume the BBC is where the nation watches
Earthshot Prize Moves to Prime Video: What a Streaming Deal Says About the Modern Monarchy
When I was a child, royal events were on the BBC. That was simply where they lived, like the weather forecast. The Christmas broadcast, the weddings, the Trooping the Colour: you turned on BBC One and a man with a hushed voice told you what you were looking at.
It is a sign of how much has changed that the news this week caused barely a ripple. A broadcaster’s royal page carried the headline that William lands a major Amazon deal as the Earthshot Prize heads to Prime Video. A royal news digest for 1 October referred to the Prince’s exciting news about an upcoming streaming broadcast.
What the Earthshot Prize Is
For those who have not followed it, the Earthshot Prize was launched by the Prince in 2020. It awards a million pounds each to five winners a year for solutions to environmental problems, and is intended to run for a decade. The name echoes President Kennedy’s moonshot. The annual ceremony moves from city to city and has been held in London, Boston, Singapore, Cape Town and Rio de Janeiro.
It is the Prince’s signature project and the clearest expression of what kind of public figure he intends to be: a convener who uses his profile to draw money and attention to people doing practical work.
Why a Streamer
I have only the headline to go on, and I would rather not guess at the terms. The reasoning behind such a move, though, is not hard to see.
Reach. A streaming service is available in a great many countries at once. A prize with global ambitions wants a global audience, and younger viewers in particular have drifted from scheduled television.
Resources. A technology company has deep pockets and a strong interest in prestige content.
Control. A partnership with a platform can give a project more say over how it is presented than a slot in a broadcaster’s schedule.
What Might Be Lost
There are costs, and I think they deserve to be stated.
A public broadcaster is free to air. A streaming service usually sits behind a subscription. If the ceremony is available only to subscribers, a project that speaks of the whole planet will be seen by those who pay.
There is also the question of who the partner is. Any large corporation has an environmental record that can be debated, and a company built on delivering goods to doorsteps around the world is no exception. An environmental prize partnered with it will be asked awkward questions. The organisers will no doubt have thought about that, and the company would point to its own climate commitments. But it is a fair point for critics to raise.
And there is the old principle that the Royal Family does not do commercial deals. The Prize is a charity, not a personal venture, and the distinction matters. Still, the line between royal patronage and corporate partnership is one the Palace has always watched carefully.
The Other Brother
It is impossible to mention royals and streaming without the comparison that will occur to everyone. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex signed with a streaming company after stepping back from royal duties and made programmes about their own lives. That was a commercial arrangement for personal income and was controversial for that reason.
The Earthshot deal is a different animal: a charitable prize finding a platform. But the fact that both brothers have ended up working with American streaming giants says something about where audiences are.
The BBC Question
The relationship between the Palace and the BBC has had its strains in recent years, over an infamous interview from the 1990s and over documentaries the family disliked. I would not read too much into a single deal. The BBC still carries the great state occasions and will go on doing so. But the assumption that the national broadcaster is the automatic home for royal content has clearly gone.
What It Tells Us About William
I think this is consistent with how the Prince operates. He has shown himself willing to depart from how things were done. He gives interviews in unexpected places. He has appeared on an American sports podcast. He treats his causes as campaigns that need marketing.
Some traditionalists find this unsettling. A monarchy, they say, should not chase audiences. Others think an institution that does not go where the people are will find one day that the people have forgotten it.
The Risk
The risk in any media strategy is that the medium becomes the story. If coverage of this year’s prize is about the platform and not the winners, the move will have backfired. The test will be whether the people with the ideas, the scientists and engineers and community organisers, get more attention than they did before.
A Personal Note
I confess to a pang for the hushed man on BBC One. There was a comfort in everyone watching the same thing at the same time. That world has gone for everything else, and it was always going to go for this.
What matters is whether the work is good. A million pounds to someone restoring coral or cleaning city air is a million pounds, whoever broadcasts the cheque being handed over.
Light Relief
Royals on television have supplied comedians with material for seventy years. The London Prat continues in its British satirical news on royals and television and London satirical news about streaming deals. You will also find more of my notes from the Mall there. Bohiney Magazine covers the American end.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
