Well, at least Jen Salke doesn’t have to peddle the $40 million Melania Trump movie. That’s a silver lining, I guess, amid yesterday’s unceremonious ouster of Amazon MGM Studios’ top content executive, steward of a $9 billion+ annual programming budget and one of the most powerful figures of the past decade in Hollywood. Like many of the exec firings lately, this one seems simultaneously abrupt and long overdue.

No, Salke’s deal wasn’t up. (Amazon doesn’t do contracts.) Yes, she had been in the role for more than seven often rocky years and poured tens of billions of dollars into original film and TV, with less to show for it—both critically and commercially—than some of her rivals. This despite the power and ubiquity of Amazon Prime, and a video service that many of its more than 200 million subscribers consider to be “free.” Prime Video’s share of viewing on TVs in the U.S. has been stuck between 3 percent and 3.5 percent outside of the NFL season, according to Nielsen—above Max, Peacock, and Paramount+, but less than half of Netflix and well behind Disney+/Hulu. With exceptions, big-budget shows tend to come and go on Prime Video with little viewership or buzz. Amazon won zero Emmys during September’s primetime telecast and was similarly shut out at the Oscars a few weeks ago. Multiple re-orgs sometimes left creatives wondering who was in charge of their shows or development deals. Top producers and agents often had trouble getting Salke to even call them back.