The Hollywood Reporter and its at-large editor and veteran reporter Kim Masters are the last places one would expect to see anything even hinting that catering to LGTBQWERTY sensibilities might explain poor performance with audiences.  Hollywood may be the gay-friendliest place on Earth, after all.

That must be why it took almost 2,500 words in this long article on troubles at Amazon Studios before the subject of discarding the system of audience ratings was introduced.  Amazon's Prime Video is the greatest rival of Netflix and spends enormous amounts of money seeking "tent pole" series that will cause people to want to subscribe or renew their subscriptions.  Yet Netflix dominates Prime when it comes to the most popular streaming series.

It seems that the problem with letting audiences tell them what they like (and presumably making decisions on what to make and release) is this:

Another complaint is that Sanders [head of television programming] relies heavily on feedback from focus groups, which tend to favor broad and less inclusive programming. Several Amazon insiders say the reliance on testing and data led to a clash late last summer, when an Amazon executive said in a marketing meeting for the series A League of Their Own that data showed audiences found queer stories off-putting and suggested downplaying those themes in materials promoting the show. Series co-creator Will Graham became greatly concerned about bias built into Amazon's system for evaluating shows, which multiple sources say often ranked broad series featuring straight, white male leads above all others. One executive calls A League of Their Own "a proxy for how diverse and inclusive shows are treated."

Graham launched into an interrogation of the system, questioning multiple executives about it. Amazon took the issue seriously and dropped the system of ranking shows based on audience scores. Insiders cite this show as one that Sanders did passionately support, but for months after it dropped, there was no word on whether it would be renewed. Ultimately, Amazon agreed to a four-episode second and final season. Still, several Amazon veterans believe the system remains too dependent on those same test scores. "All this perpetuation of white guys with guns — it's a self-fulfilling prophecy," says one. And another: "Relying on data is soul crushing ... There's never, 'I know the testing wasn't that great, but I believe in this.'" Graham declined to comment.

In a Not The Bee report on Masters's article, Joel Abbott writes:

Note that this executive didn't say stop making gay storylines, but to hide it from the marketing materials.

Abbott posits that audiences are not necessarily avoiding gay content so much as wanting to be entertained:

Viewers don't have to worry about a 10-minute background on the character's victimhood and oppression. They don't need to worry that 10 minutes in, there will be a short sermon on climate change and transgenderism. They don't need to worry that the main character will go French-kissing his boyfriend every other scene so we know how awesome and amazing it is to be gay.

Masters may have said the quiet part out loud by bringing this to light, albeit delicately and without connecting a lot of dots.  Amazon can afford to spend lots of money on programming because, unlike Netflix, it has a larger parent company whose main business is retailing.  But eventually, Jeff Bezos has to get tired of being number two.  Prime Video executives probably aren't going to be giving a lot of interviews about internal matters in the wake of this report, especially now that conservatives have noticed it.