For me AppleTV+ has some absolute bangers like Slow Horses, Foundation, Silo etc. and a some meh content. Overall it feels very much too Hollywood / California / US centric.
Apple has too often leaned in on an established cast approach which is quite costly and a bit tired. Content is also safe and not very edgy.
Contrast that with Netflixs superb global production approach with lots of local content produced to be accessible globally. Prime used to have a lot of out there edgy stuff before they went all bonkers with LOTR and Wheel of Time money pits.
Streaming is a format that enables you to take risks and enable a diverse palette of artistic directions. Having said this I also find it tiring to wade through the vast volumes of rubbish on other streaming platforms.
AppleTV+ is my least used streaming service but I still hold out hope for improvement over time. Apple made Apple Music into something wonderful for me and I hope that AppleTV+ will get there eventually.
So here we are. I can explain this to the Netflix guy. For Apple TV+, Apple produces a relatively small stable of high-quality original series and films which yield a pretty high "hit rate" among viewers, as compared to their competition.
After more than 5 years there is still no viable business model. The service is holding just 0.3% of TV screen viewing time in the U.S.
How many more years should TV+ be taking billions from shareholders? 10 years?
I recall Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both talking emphatically about how promising the future looked for “content owners” in 2007. Apple is now a legitimate content owner with its Apple TV+. If Apple really wanted to, they probably could have acquired Disney, Pixar, etc., at some point.
Personally, I feel the promise of riches that would come from have being a big time content owner has been eroded to a substantial degree by things like TikToc and YouTube. I don’t really know who “owns” the content that’s inside these alternative media outlets, but it doesn’t feel like it’s consolidated into one big bucket that’s being held by one big content owner of sorts.
It’s a game of survival of the fittest in many markets. It could be the exact opposite of the Amazon effect. Amazon has devastated the small, medium, and now several large retailers because of the massive networking effect of its online internet. With production studios, a proliferation of an army of small studios could render the larger production studios dinosaurs, not only by virtue of sheer numbers, but because of generative AI blended with traditional media/movie creation drastically reducing the resources needed to compete for eyeballs. I know the big studios have bound themselves up in a web of AI countermeasures, but what about production that’s done for YouTube distribution, just to name one alternative outlet?
I recall Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both talking emphatically about how promising the future looked for “content owners” in 2007. Apple is now a legitimate content owner with its Apple TV+. If Apple really wanted to, they probably could have acquired Disney, Pixar, etc., at some point.
"Content is King" is an essay by Gates written in 1996. It was the idea at the time shared with Jobs/Pixar. I disagree. It isn't content or products but distribution. Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Google Search/Discover (through Chrome) own the distribution. Apple and Google owns distribution of apps. Pixar had no distribution - Disney could deliver that.
Distribution is where the revenue from sales, subscriptions, and ads have moved. To Google it doesn't matter if you post a video on how to fold a napkin or have a background in journalism. Click is the currency. You don't need to check sources to get clicks. It shows.
I can easily exhaust the quality watchable Apple TV+ content with a free month every year or so. No need to subscribe. The whole service seems like a waste of effort from Apple to me.
I have the service as part of my ISPs internet package but never watch anything. I rarely watch Amazon Prime or Disney + either.
It's not necessarily a bad service to offer but you need to have something that can have short term success (due to trends or fads etc) or long lasting hits that retain after market value. If not, it's like throwing money into a bottomless pit.
From what I've seen, there isn't much of that on offer.
With other services, and streaming in general, there is too much space to fill and too much 'filler' to flesh episodes/films out. It can be agonising sometimes. Then you have series that do well and get canceled because budgets are spread too thin or series that don't do too well at release and get canceled well before a decent ending is reached or they can gain traction.
One of the root causes is saturation. There is too much on offer and a lot of it is poor quality. There will be convergence at some point and then we'll probably swing in the other direction and see subscription prices rocket.
This is a rare article that actually tries to suss out what Apple is doing with AppleTV+. Clearly they're not chasing total subscriber numbers. If they were, just buy Netflix and rename it AppleTV+. Boom, now you're the market leader. Or if that's too pricey, start churning out the same tsunami of crap that Netflix does. True crime, romcom, heists, 70 shows about serial killers etc. Can't be that hard to mimic.
The fact that Apple has spent years doing the opposite means they have some other strategy entirely. Using AppleTV+ as a loss leader to boost Apple One subscriptions is one possibility.
Apple is supposedly losing billions of dollars, buying Netflix or Movie/TV company and doing the Blizzard games dance like Microsoft isn’t gonna make Apple more profitable, buying a content company is a waste of money because all the talent goes away once the game or the movie is done you are effect doubling your losses,….
Apple probably did it the best way you can starting from the ground up, the problem with that it takes a lot of time and even at the end of it you still are not gonna have the results you want particularly from a company like Apple, that expects large margins, but the way they did it was probably as good as it’s gonna get, for every movie or TV show you make there are probably five or six bad ones not even Apple can change those odds, which are about the same in the AAA gaming industry. Note the book and the record industries also have about the same odds.
Comments
Apple has too often leaned in on an established cast approach which is quite costly and a bit tired. Content is also safe and not very edgy.
Contrast that with Netflixs superb global production approach with lots of local content produced to be accessible globally. Prime used to have a lot of out there edgy stuff before they went all bonkers with LOTR and Wheel of Time money pits.
Streaming is a format that enables you to take risks and enable a diverse palette of artistic directions. Having said this I also find it tiring to wade through the vast volumes of rubbish on other streaming platforms.
AppleTV+ is my least used streaming service but I still hold out hope for improvement over time. Apple made Apple Music into something wonderful for me and I hope that AppleTV+ will get there eventually.
How many more years should TV+ be taking billions from shareholders? 10 years?
Personally, I feel the promise of riches that would come from have being a big time content owner has been eroded to a substantial degree by things like TikToc and YouTube. I don’t really know who “owns” the content that’s inside these alternative media outlets, but it doesn’t feel like it’s consolidated into one big bucket that’s being held by one big content owner of sorts.
It’s a game of survival of the fittest in many markets. It could be the exact opposite of the Amazon effect. Amazon has devastated the small, medium, and now several large retailers because of the massive networking effect of its online internet. With production studios, a proliferation of an army of small studios could render the larger production studios dinosaurs, not only by virtue of sheer numbers, but because of generative AI blended with traditional media/movie creation drastically reducing the resources needed to compete for eyeballs. I know the big studios have bound themselves up in a web of AI countermeasures, but what about production that’s done for YouTube distribution, just to name one alternative outlet?
Distribution is where the revenue from sales, subscriptions, and ads have moved. To Google it doesn't matter if you post a video on how to fold a napkin or have a background in journalism. Click is the currency. You don't need to check sources to get clicks. It shows.
It's not necessarily a bad service to offer but you need to have something that can have short term success (due to trends or fads etc) or long lasting hits that retain after market value. If not, it's like throwing money into a bottomless pit.
From what I've seen, there isn't much of that on offer.
With other services, and streaming in general, there is too much space to fill and too much 'filler' to flesh episodes/films out. It can be agonising sometimes. Then you have series that do well and get canceled because budgets are spread too thin or series that don't do too well at release and get canceled well before a decent ending is reached or they can gain traction.
One of the root causes is saturation. There is too much on offer and a lot of it is poor quality. There will be convergence at some point and then we'll probably swing in the other direction and see subscription prices rocket.
The entire streaming industry needs a reset.
Apple probably did it the best way you can starting from the ground up, the problem with that it takes a lot of time and even at the end of it you still are not gonna have the results you want particularly from a company like Apple, that expects large margins, but the way they did it was probably as good as it’s gonna get, for every movie or TV show you make there are probably five or six bad ones not even Apple can change those odds, which are about the same in the AAA gaming industry. Note the book and the record industries also have about the same odds.