Apple TV+ will struggle to meet European quotas for local content at launch

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 44
    FolioFolio Posts: 698member
    I routinely scour iTunes/movies seeking non-US offerings, often to just help my foreign language skills. It used to be a chore. In the last few months, Apple (at least for US users) has created a Foreign film category, and better stocked its inventory. Europe is rich in excellent crime/mystery drama TV series, not all as well known as France's Spiral, from Scandinavia to Italy. Korea some excellent comedies. I had hoped Apple would get rights to these shows (which ran on the MHz network). But last I looked Amazon got many of them.
  • Reply 22 of 44
    foljs said:
    firelock said:
    Thank you for this article. This explains why there is so much European-produced TV content popping up in Hulu (Das Boot), HBO (Chernobyl), etc. I think EU over-regulation is going to really hamper Internet companies operating there, and ultimately not serve the public interest. The “right to be forgotten” rule for example, while they make exceptions for “public” figures, is very gray in a number of areas and could be used to withhold valuable information from the public. It also places an undue burden on the providers to figure out who can make a legitimate takedown request and who cannot.
    As a European, it's certainly in the public interest not to have 100% American shows in the dominating subscription services...
    Or just maybe, you would have more entrepreneurs and startups in Europe if you stopped over-regulating everything?
    AppleExposed
  • Reply 23 of 44
    foljs said:

    I don't expect Americans to know much about the world...

    How about taking off that MAGA hat?
    Ironically, the ‘MAGA’ hat is meant to represent that America can be great in part due to localised production. So you’re criticising someone for having that general perspective while appearing to support Europe’s requirement that things be made in Europe... The hypocrisy is rather amusing.
    AppleExposed
  • Reply 24 of 44
    asdasdasdasd Posts: 5,686member
    maestro64 said:
    foljs said:
    razorpit said:
    Did not know this law existed. Does Europe have this requirement for any other industry such as manufacturing? 
    Both the US and Europe have such requirements for all kinds of industries, and have had since forever. Those are part of trade agreements and tariffs. The US however doesn't have one such for movies/shows, because Americans are provincial and not very world-aware, and don't consume as much foreign movies/shows in the first place, compared to any other country (closer to zero, with small exceptions such as anime, though even those are niche when it comes to the general public). Even for music, the mainstream American audiences barely listen to anything not American (or, at best, British).

    You are correct most US citizens do not consume foreign made content, is that because we all ignorant and lack cultural or it is because the rest of the world products are not that good. Keep in mind everyone in the US came from somewhere else, and they mostly choose to consume US made content. There are exceptions, I know there are communities of people in US who tend to consume their home country content, but it usually fads within a single generation. Again is it that people in the US lack curiosity or what is out there is not all that good. On the flip of this, what do people in other country tend to like US content over local content.

    Going back far enough and we all come from somewhere else. Its not true that European stuff doesn't sell in the US either, although it  is mostly British stuff that sells. And that's moot post Brexit.
  • Reply 25 of 44

    Get off your European high horse. Americans are not very world aware? Give me a break...
    I agree that foljs is on a high horse, but being an American who lived in the UK for two years I can say that Americans are not very world aware. America is isolated geographically (Canada and Mexico relations are not even remotely equivalent to European relations) and has been relatively self-sufficient in many areas.

    Just look at things in America. We have large groups of people believing that our own culture should be adapting to immigrants’ culture rather than immigrants adapting to American culture. We are so blissfully ignorant of the significance of other cultures being tied to other countries that we don’t understand the healthy expectation for visitors to adapt to another country. I’m not talking about showing kindness and love to immigrants, I’m talking about changing our country and morals and policies so that immigrants don’t have to actually be Americans but can still feel like they ‘belong’.
  • Reply 26 of 44
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    sarthos said:
    foljs said:
    firelock said:
    Thank you for this article. This explains why there is so much European-produced TV content popping up in Hulu (Das Boot), HBO (Chernobyl), etc. I think EU over-regulation is going to really hamper Internet companies operating there, and ultimately not serve the public interest. The “right to be forgotten” rule for example, while they make exceptions for “public” figures, is very gray in a number of areas and could be used to withhold valuable information from the public. It also places an undue burden on the providers to figure out who can make a legitimate takedown request and who cannot.
    As a European, it's certainly in the public interest not to have 100% American shows in the dominating subscription services...
    Or just maybe, you would have more entrepreneurs and startups in Europe if you stopped over-regulating everything?
    Not at all. Regulations have little to do with this from a commercial perspective. Hollywood and Bollywood had huge markets to target. That was the foundation of their success.

    Europe has created its own huge market and is now looking to create far more internal demand on every level but the problem of language in the arts from a commercial standpoint is there and not easy to deal with. 

    If we bring the best talent in from around Europe, which language should the finished product use? Logic says English (from a business perspective) but that only skirts the root problem which is the cultural context.

    Hence regulations to ensure that everyone is catered to as fairly as possible. A larger industry will be created to seek success on a wider stage and the fruits of that will be ploughed back into support for regional efforts that will occasionally also become worldwide successes (even if they end up labelled cult classics).

    As I said earlier though, the biggest problem with quotas is quality. I hope Apple and Disney manage to get some quality into their foreign offerings.
  • Reply 27 of 44
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    foljs said:
    razorpit said:
    Did not know this law existed. Does Europe have this requirement for any other industry such as manufacturing? 
    Both the US and Europe have such requirements for all kinds of industries, and have had since forever. Those are part of trade agreements and tariffs. The US however doesn't have one such for movies/shows, because Americans are provincial and not very world-aware, and don't consume as much foreign movies/shows in the first place, compared to any other country (closer to zero, with small exceptions such as anime, though even those are niche when it comes to the general public). Even for music, the mainstream American audiences barely listen to anything not American (or, at best, British).
    Not very world aware? Condescend much? To be fair we have our homers, but lets not kid ourselves thinking Europe is some bastion of worldly awareness. Driving 3 hours and going through 3 countries doesn't make you any more "aware" of the world than diving 6 hours and getting half way across Texas.
    pscooter63
  • Reply 28 of 44
    razorpitrazorpit Posts: 1,796member
    spice-boy said:
    razorpit said:
    Did not know this law existed. Does Europe have this requirement for any other industry such as manufacturing? 
    I have many European friends and I can tell you American entertainment dominates TV and the internet via YouTube, etc...  I have Swedish nieces who learned English that way. Imagine if the US did not have Hollywood and we got a majority of our entertainment from India or China? 
    I enjoy music and movies from many different cultures and countries however home grown stuff is the majority. 
    I literally had this discussion with some guys after a hockey game last night. We were talking about how awesome Slovakia and Slovenia is. They told me the kids there learned English from the cartoons. They speak English 10x better then the more "educated" sections of Europe like France. 

    Sad some still label us as not "worldly" enough, playing a Canadian sport, hanging out with a bunch of Slovaks. I wish I was as "enlightened" as them.  ;)
    AppleExposed
  • Reply 29 of 44
    It is understanding why they would want to encourage a local production industry, and it's in Apple's and others' interest to do so,.The challenge will be that the EU government has apparently relatively unbridled power over its citizens and businesses which brings to mind the question, is this going to be a moving line.  Once Apple and others have sufficient portions of the market, do they demand it is 50%, 75, 100?  Sovereign nations, or in Europe's case the individual countries have given up their sovereignty to a centralized group called the EU, have the right to set whatever laws they want, but this is an example of where they are headed.  Watch for them to insist on an increasing amount of quotas in a vast number of areas, to offset an inability for the companies in their sphere to be able to compete.
    AppleExposed
  • Reply 30 of 44
    georgie01 said:

    Get off your European high horse. Americans are not very world aware? Give me a break...
    I agree that foljs is on a high horse, but being an American who lived in the UK for two years I can say that Americans are not very world aware. America is isolated geographically (Canada and Mexico relations are not even remotely equivalent to European relations) and has been relatively self-sufficient in many areas.

    Just look at things in America. We have large groups of people believing that our own culture should be adapting to immigrants’ culture rather than immigrants adapting to American culture. We are so blissfully ignorant of the significance of other cultures being tied to other countries that we don’t understand the healthy expectation for visitors to adapt to another country. I’m not talking about showing kindness and love to immigrants, I’m talking about changing our country and morals and policies so that immigrants don’t have to actually be Americans but can still feel like they ‘belong’.
    I disagree. I think it's stupid to generalize and think Americans aren't very world aware. Sure, there are people here that couldn't name the countries if they were shown a map of Europe, but there are plenty Americans who are world aware. To be fair, isn't it kind of silly asking people here to adapt to immigrants moving here? They should learn English, respect our culture, etc. There is nothing wrong with bringing their culture with them, but we shouldn't have to cater to them. If I emigrated to another country, I think it would be disrespectful if I didn't learn the local language and culture. Sure, I would bring American culture with me but I would respect the local culture of the country I'm moving too. I've actually lived in Central America for a few years so I know what its like moving to another country. 
  • Reply 31 of 44
    apple ][apple ][ Posts: 9,233member

    And France's Culture Minister, Franck Riester, has said that services which do not comply with such a rule would be shut down in that territory.
    Screw the EU fascists!

    Apple should not even bother to make Apple TV + available in that region of the world. Problem solved.

    Just watch. The EU, spearheaded by France, Germany and other countries that are run like the mafia will be coming after Apple sometime in the future for not having enough "local" content, and they'll be trying to extort money or penalties from Apple again, just like they're coming after Apple for the Ireland tax money.

    Apple shouldn't even bother providing certain services to the backwards and primitive censorship happy Europeans. It's more trouble than it's worth.

    I was in Europe this summer, and I was glad when I set foot on American soil again.
  • Reply 32 of 44
    Yep, the worldly Americans that fly off the handle about having to produce local content in Europe. Who could doubt that it was so? 
  • Reply 33 of 44
    AppleExposedAppleExposed Posts: 1,805unconfirmed, member
    This is dumber than manufacturing laws. 30 fu**ing percent?!!?!

    What next?
    India to require 40% of content produced locally.
    Nigeria to require 50%
    Canada to require 55%

    See how this is deterrent to creativity and can cause a dilemma?

    foljs said:
    firelock said:
    Thank you for this article. This explains why there is so much European-produced TV content popping up in Hulu (Das Boot), HBO (Chernobyl), etc. I think EU over-regulation is going to really hamper Internet companies operating there, and ultimately not serve the public interest. The “right to be forgotten” rule for example, while they make exceptions for “public” figures, is very gray in a number of areas and could be used to withhold valuable information from the public. It also places an undue burden on the providers to figure out who can make a legitimate takedown request and who cannot.
    As a European, it's certainly in the public interest not to have 100% American shows in the dominating subscription services...

    I hate the whole "successful people should be punished" narrative.

    Don't like it? Make better shows or create better streaming services than America.

    Why would this have any impact on Apple (or the others) in any meaningful way?

    When we were talking about broadcast content, having 30%+ being local meant that a part of finite resource (hours in the week) was being set aside for Euro content.  But with streaming, who cares if Apple has 30 great shows + 10 other shows versus 30 great shows?  So Apple (and others) just need to buys a bunch of cheap Euro content and stash it in a dark corner of their app.  If there aren't a few companies out there cranking out super cheap "local" content to meet the demand for quality-is-no-object content, they are missing a great opportunity.

    Having said that, I doubt Apple would actually do this (pad their inventory with cheap garbage to meet the letter of the law), but I would.

    Don't get me wrong, there is great content coming out of Europe.  Das Boot is terrific (if you don't mind more raping scenes than most shows) and there was that one about the America mobster hanging out in Sweden, for example.  But if necessary to meet the quota, these companies shouldn't think twice about filling the rest with garbage.  No one cares about the average/mean rating of all the shows on a platform.

    Apple doesn't want that though. They are going after quality not quantity. Plus as Apples library grows their % of European content shrinks. It's a never-ending dilemma.

    The only solution I could think of is purchasing local content to be streamed locally only.

    For example if my above comment comes to pass (European 30%, India 40% Nigeria 50%, Canada 55%) this equals 175% of extra content. Which is ridiculous. What Apple could do is purchase that amount of content to stream in their respective territories. So 40% of Indian crap will only be streamed in India to satisfy their laws. But we still have the increasing overall content issue where Apple will have to continually buy more content as their library grows.
  • Reply 34 of 44
    greg uvan said:
    Call me a free market guy, but this just sounds like straight up censorship. I'm from Canada, and the Canadian gov't pulls the same crap. It's nominally to protect Canadian artists and workers. But it makes me angry that there is content that is on the internet, technically available globally, that we cannot access for political reasons. It's also infantalizing of the Canadian population. A) That we can't decide for ourselves what we'd prefer to watch, and spend our money on what we actually want to spend our money on, and B ) That Canadian artists can't compete on a global scale. Yes they can. If a Canadian production is good, people everywhere, including in the US, will lap it up, not because there is some law forcing them watch it, but because it's great content. So, governments should stop treating us like children, and let us spend our money to watch whatever we want. And if that content is coming from America, then, that's where it's coming from. </rant>
    This is only true for TV networks and certain cable channels that have mandatory carriage. Before streaming, US programing was cheaper due to scale. No matter how popular a Canadian show, it was still more expensive per viewer than buying an American show because American production companies didn't care about maximizing international revenue back in the day because they had such scale in their domestic market to amortize costs.

    There are no restrictions on streaming. Certain shows aren't available in Netflix because Netflix doesn't own the Canadian/global rights (Crave, Amazon, cable net etc). Territorial rights are the big reason for difference in libraries globally. That's also why Hulu isn't available outside the US.
  • Reply 35 of 44
    It's a bit of an interesting question because Apple has offices in various european countries. What is stopping Apple Ireland from being the IP holder for example - and would that be enough to qualify as European?

    And what about British content post-Brexit? Would pre-brexit shows still be included in the tally?
  • Reply 36 of 44
    AppleExposed said: See how this is deterrent to creativity and can cause a dilemma?
    Not really. Europe has creatives that make television shows and movies. 
    Carnage
  • Reply 37 of 44
    The best shows I watch on Netflix are EU and latin America.  The is also similar rules in Canada,  Netflix had to spend 500 millions by 2020 and they already achieved it.  Glad to see more international content.
    Carnage
  • Reply 38 of 44
    razorpit said:
    Did not know this law existed. Does Europe have this requirement for any other industry such as manufacturing? 
    Not 'Europe' but the EU.... The unelected EU commission is forever coming up with ridiculous laws for stupid reasons (eg banning powerful vacuum cleaners) and then forcing it onto the citizens of all the member states who can't stop them.
    One of the MANY reasons why Britain voted to Leave the EU.
  • Reply 39 of 44
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,624member
    seanj said:
    razorpit said:
    Did not know this law existed. Does Europe have this requirement for any other industry such as manufacturing? 
    Not 'Europe' but the EU.... The unelected EU commission is forever coming up with ridiculous laws for stupid reasons (eg banning powerful vacuum cleaners) and then forcing it onto the citizens of all the member states who can't stop them.
    One of the MANY reasons why Britain voted to Leave the EU.
    Your life has benefited from countless EU laws. When I ask people to name some of the crazy ones, often they can't name one or simply tout off the myths on EU laws.

    The air you breathe, the labelling on your food, the protections on your food, your mortgage, your consumer rights. Just about everything you can think of that affects your everyday life. No mean feat.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-41119355

    On a cultural level do you understand why
    Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland also have certain legal protections? This percentage law is an attempt to conserve certain cultural areas.

    Apple is not forced to deliver content to the EU. It can withdraw if it wishes too but if it wants to do business here there are laws to be followed.

    I'm not saying all EU laws are perfect. Many laws are changed to adapt them to new ways of thinking, realities or to clarify matters but in general, most people are perfectly happy with the laws coming out of the EU.

  • Reply 40 of 44
    sarthos said:
    foljs said:
    firelock said:
    Thank you for this article. This explains why there is so much European-produced TV content popping up in Hulu (Das Boot), HBO (Chernobyl), etc. I think EU over-regulation is going to really hamper Internet companies operating there, and ultimately not serve the public interest. The “right to be forgotten” rule for example, while they make exceptions for “public” figures, is very gray in a number of areas and could be used to withhold valuable information from the public. It also places an undue burden on the providers to figure out who can make a legitimate takedown request and who cannot.
    As a European, it's certainly in the public interest not to have 100% American shows in the dominating subscription services...
    Or just maybe, you would have more entrepreneurs and startups in Europe if you stopped over-regulating everything?
    You most likely never been to Europe which by the way consist of many countries with unique languages and different cultures. I've spent the most time in Sweden and I can tell you that entertainment is not regulated in regards to content. Rap / hip hop songs which use words which are (beeped out) in the US are not there. The same applies to TV which does not shun nudity the way Puritan America does. Regulations which are laws designed for companies are necessary the same when we have regulations for people. Why give corporations a green light to do anything that the average citizen would be fined and or jailed for? 
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