First reported by Puck’s Dylan Byers and others who’ve since followed, former MSNBC host and disgraced former NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will make his return to the journalism business on Election Day with a primetime special covering the election returns on…Amazon.
Williams seems to not have lost his enormous ego as Byers has also reported Amazon’s rumored to be billing it a one-night only event in the mold of, in Williams’s mind, Sinatra at Madison Square Garden.
Byers broke the news on Saturday: “Amazon has signed BRIAN WILLIAMS to anchor election night coverage on Prime Video, per sources familiar. This is Amazon’s first foray into news and Williams’ first return to anchor desk since NBC.”
Byers elaborated on this in a Wednesday night story that revealed he actually knew about this possible mode of returning to the public eye in February thanks to a private dinner he had with Williams and his former producer at MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, Jonathan Wald (who, before that, worked with another leftist egomaniac in Don Lemon).
Byers began by laying it on thick for his subject, calling the Amazon foray “not only a first step toward a possible career revival, but also a potential harbinger of the future of cable news.”
He then shared that he dined with Williams and heard this pitch “on a brisk February night in New York—so many eons of media cycles ago—I found myself sitting down to dinner at Elio’s, the swell and storied Upper East Side red sauce refuge.”
Before running through how CBS and CNN had previously tried to poach him since he left MSNBC in a nasty, pompous sign-off on December 9, 2021, Byers revealed what poor Lyin’ Brian has been up to in the last three years:
By then, the well-kept newsman had been in the wilderness for more than two years: idling around his beach house in Bay Head, volunteering at the nearby fire station, traveling with Springsteen, and entertaining advances from friends and strangers who wanted to know when his familiar visage might grace their television screens again.
Try and contain yourself from laughing at this gushy lament about Brian as America’s “last truly iconic news anchor” akin to Al Michaels and was able to weather a “positively quaint now” scandal to create “an after-hours oasis” on MSNBC from “Squad-inflected” punditry (click “expand”):
Indeed, Williams’ third act has been an evergreen preoccupation among media insiders amid the industry’s broader transformation. In many ways, Williams was the nation’s last truly iconic news anchor: a natural broadcast talent, Brokaw disciple, and self-described institutionalist whose Brahminesque baritone embodied the news much the same way Al Michaels’ outerborough nobility embodied the game of football. (I grew up in an NBC household, obviously.) After being driven from the Nightly News due to his helicopter embellishment scandal—humiliating then, positively quaint now—Williams stuck it out at MSNBC long enough to write a second act as a more personable, lower-profile institutional authority in late night cable, an after-hours oasis from his network’s Squad-inflected liberal orthodoxy.
Of course, the golden era Williams grew up in was already a distant memory by then, and the demand for a classic anchorman of his ilk was disappearing, at least at his price point. Before his contract came up in 2021, I’m told, then-newish NBC News Group chairman Cesar Conde declined to offer him a raise—a financial austerity measure that presaged Hoda Kotb’s recent pay cut and the impending salary realignment now transforming the industry.
Painting this idea as Wald having pulled out of the blue, he said Wald “suddenly…lit upon another idea” of “Election Night in America With Brian Williams. One night only.” Byers relayed that, while “[i]t would require some investment, sure, but they wouldn’t need to stand up a newsroom or any newsgathering infrastructure.”
Williams was thrilled: “Williams’ interest was piqued by the idea; if memory serves, he likened it to Sinatra’s one-night-only event at the Garden.”
Byers caught readers up on how things evolved from that dinner, including Williams’s agent pitching this over the summer to Netflix (which passed) before finding Amazon Prime Video executives “more intrigued by the idea.”
By August, Williams and Wald visited Amazon’s “at Amazon’s new state-of-the-art virtual soundstage” out in Culver City, California and, as “home to the largest LED wall stage in the U.S.,” the two saw the possibilities.
Cue the laugh tracks again as Byers said the Amazon suits “stressed the importance of” it being “politically down the middle—easy enough for an institutionalist like Williams[.]”
Oh, yes, the guy who’s made a tome of Notable Quotables (which we chronicled here and here) fawning over Obama and the like while smearing the Republicans, the Tea Party, and then Trump supporters.
Byers also shared two other behind-the-scenes production minds and even the first confirmed guest in James Carville:
I can also now report that they’ve enlisted Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner, the Emmy-winning production duo behind myriad Oscars and Tonys ceremonies, Super Bowl halftime shows, Kennedy Center Honors, and presidential conventions and inaugurations. They will help produce the show with Wald, who will serve as executive producer and showrunner. I’m also told that Williams and Wald have commitments from some notable political commentators, including veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who will join Williams’ broadcast exclusively[.]
