Carmbo

Disney+ will do quite well, I’m sure, but it’s not going to appeal to everybody in that it’s basically a lot of legacy content and even more doses of Star Wars, Marvel and Co. There are only so many hours in a day any of us can set aside for consuming media on our home screens. As such, immense amounts of content in of itself is virtually useless unless there’s something of real value in the mix. Too much of X or a whole lot of Y doesn’t get it done if neither X or Y adds any real value to your viewing experience. Netflix has a lot more going on, as does Amazon Prime, in terms of serving up interesting fresh content and presumably Apple will be bringing into the mix plenty of original programming, some of which will no doubt, prove appealing. 

Households with children who eat up the Disney catalogue will certainly enthusiastically embrace the new service, provided Disney doesn’t get greedy after the launch phase wraps up. Yet there are a lot of households that I can imagine would regard Disney+ as heavy on volume but short on value. Netflix/Amazon Prime and now Apple TV+ are really different services, pinning their hopes on original content more than legacy titles. Those three streaming services combined are ample in meeting my streaming needs and additional services are going to have a hard time convincing me to add them, too.

If Apple doesn’t rush out and gather up third-party filler content to charge more, this effort will be a big success. Keep subscription cost below other streaming options and focus more on quality than quantity. These days there is a lot of available content. Personally I’m not looking at Disney’s new service because between Netflix, Amazon Prime and now AppleTV+ I have run out of hours in the day to fit any more content in. In addition to what I’m already subscribing to, there’s sports to follow and I like to collect movies, so AppleTV+ is about as much as I can handle in terms of adding even more available content, beyond that. Really, the only reason Apple’s offering has a real chance in surviving in what is becoming a crowded market, is that it likely will be low-cost enough to be seen as a worthwhile compliment. Among the rest of them, as more providers pile on, I suspect there will be winners and losers, as consumers figure out which services to sign up for. Few households will go for all of them, would be my guess.