Amazon Prime Video has also ended its contract with its South African PR firm Ten x Collective which will no longer do any publicity work for Amazon MGM Studios' content after this month.
The end of the contract with Ten x Collective is part of Amazon turning off its money tap for the creation of local African content that included the abrupt axing of all further African original productions in South Africa and Nigeria, the retrenchment of its content teams and executives in both countries and cancelling development deals with producers.
The conclusion of its contract with a local PR firm raises fears that Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Prime Video will no longer bother to have a local PR presence in South Africa to promote any of its content through the press.
It would unbundle all the work in media relationship building that Amazon has done over the past two years to get coverage and exposure for what was its growing slate of African Originals and global series.
Stephen Barber, head of PR for Amazon in the UK, didn't respond to a media query about the streamer dropping Ten x Collective and media concerns about it.
Last month Amazon Prime Video abruptly retrenched multiple content executives and staff it lured to join its video streaming service in Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa and in Nigeria, based in London, after it rapidly ramped up plans over the past two years to create, produce and roll-out localised African Prime Video Originals.
Upset producers in South Africa and Nigeria said Amazon lured them with production promises that turned out to be fake, and that they feel duped over "promises were made and not kept".
Amazon Prime Video has drastically reigned in its content spend in Africa and on African original content as part of the streamer's global realignment that is also having a negative impact on what was its content budget for Africa.
The media launch event for LOL: Laugh Out Loud South Africa earlier this month for Amazon's streamer held at The Galleria in Sandton, Johannesburg is also its last, as well as the last for the PR company on behalf of Amazon.
LOL: Laugh Out Loud South Africa with host Trevor Noah, produced by Rapid Blue, was Amazon's first South African unscripted series but has the distinction of now also its last South African unscripted original.
One of the attendees at the media event said "there were a lot of sad and emotional people" with "an undercurrent of depression" since a lot of people talked about Amazon shutting down local content production.
Lisa Pellatt, founder and director of Ten x Collective confirmed that Amazon had ended its PR contract.
"TxC is contracted to work with
Prime Video until the end of February 2024, there has been no abrupt ending –
everything has followed procedure. We unfortunately can’t comment on how
other people felt at the event – we only received positive feedback about a
wonderful evening and fun had by all."
During its expansion into South Africa, Amazon Prime Video made use of Gillian Gamsey International Communications (GGIC) in 2022 and then switched to Ten x Collective a year ago in February 2023.
