‘Frontline’ documents rise of Amazon
“Frontline” (9 p.m., PBS, check local listings) offers an excellent history that helps make sense of the passing scene.
Nearly two hours in length, “Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos,” is merely a conversation starter. It deserves a miniseries treatment!
“Amazon” covers nearly a quarter-century of business history, from Bezos’ rise at a data-obsessed Wall Street hedge fund to his seemingly quixotic attempt to crash into the book business. He emerges in the mid-1990s as a goofy guy, always ready with a loud and awkward laugh. He’s since become the visionary titan behind a trillion-dollar company and the richest man on the planet, with visions of creating communities in outer space housing more than a million “pioneers.”
Along the way, “Bezos” catalogs Amazon’s many innovations and challenges to prevailing business models and ways that the company has exceeded expectations, seduced countless customers and at the same time created concerns about corporate gigantism, exploitation of employees and the invasion of customer privacy.
Is your privacy “invaded” when you’ve invited the intruder into your home and even paid for Alexa’s arrival?
“Bezos” unfolds like a social history of the information age, from early data-gathering of book buyers to the silent surveillance of “home assistants.” Amazon employees past and present discuss the conditions for workers at the company’s many warehouses, where innovative robotics and monitoring have made life unbearable for many.
The film remains fairly free of politics, only hinting at the Obama administration’s embrace of corporate giants, including Google and Amazon, and offering a few glances at the war of words between Bezos, the Trump administration and the Saudi kingdom.
Most of the documentary is about business and how a company might grow in the absence of any serious regulation. It’s no coincidence that Amazon has expanded during a period when the Justice Department has redefined antitrust, de-emphasizing bigness and restraint of trade as triggers for government intervention.
It’s curious to think that Microsoft faced government backlash when it wanted to combine its operating system with a search engine. But that was back in the 1990s, precisely when Bezos and Amazon were just starting out.
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Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin .tvguy@gmail.com.