“Apple Inc. appears to have finally figured out how to become an entertainment programming company — and it didn’t have to buy Netflix or Time Warner to do it,” Shira Ovide writes for Bloomberg Gadfly. “Apple is making the rounds in Hollywood, seeking to buy high-quality original TV series and perhaps movies. The idea is to supplement the Apple Music streaming song service with more digital video, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Think of Apple creating shows with similar quality and buzz to Netflix’s series Stranger Things but available only to subscribers who pay $10 a month for Apple Music.”
“For people who haven’t been following the company closely, this is approximately the 400th attempt by Apple to become a significant entertainment company,” Ovide writes. “It tried for years to negotiate deals with big media companies or cable TV providers to create its own cable television-like service with a lineup of live TV channels. It has never worked because big media companies were slow to shift away from traditional TV business models and because Apple was an arrogant jerk of a business partner. Apple also considered making its own television sets and made some early overtures to acquire its way into the media and entertainment business.”
“But Apple has finally landed on an ideal strategy to go big in Hollywood,” Ovide writes. “This time, Apple is trying to become HBO, not Netflix and not a cable company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Producing must-see TV infinitely easier said than done. Good luck, Apple!
SEE ALSO:
Apple plans significant new business in producing original television shows and movies – January 12, 2017
Apple buys James Corden’s ‘Carpool Karaoke’ TV series for Apple Music exclusive – July 26, 2016
Spotify follows Apple into original video content development – May 13, 2016
Dr. Dre to star in Apple’s first, sex-soaked scripted television series ‘Vital Signs’ – February 12, 2016
Apple looking to develop original TV series as part of new video strategy, sources say – January 29, 2016
Why Apple might feel compelled to get into original content – September 2, 2015
Just because Apple may be getting into original content doesn’t mean it can produce good shows – September 1, 2015
Apple made ‘audacious bid’ for Top Gear trio of Clarkson, Hammond and May, but lost out to Bezos’ Amazon – September 1, 2015
Why would Apple want to make their own movies and TV shows? – September 1, 2015
Apple exploring entry into original entertainment production – August 31, 2015
Seems to me Apple is looking to become Sony.
Converting from a tech/information tech company to an information appliance/consumer electronics company…
Creating an original content wing… ala Sony Pictures…
Steve always did like Sony…
Are you talking about the Sony that has reduced itself to making cheap clock radio alarms for cheap hotels…?
God, please NO!
Apple could have become “Sony” much easier if it just bought Disney, that, by the way, include another Jobs’ former company, Pixar.
The trick to that would be that Disney in terms of management would be kept separate from Apple as it is a totally different culture and business.
Attaching Apple brand to random TV shows that even theoretically can not be all good, even if made my geniuses, is not a good branding strategy. Netflix can allow itself to do that, but for Apple it is bad.
I’m deeply concerned that Apple doesn’t really know what it wants to be. Now they seem to be looking to other companies for inspiration, which is counter to their “skating where the puck will be” philosophy.
I’m not against them seeing if they can produce a decent series or film, but I worry that they are losing talent in the hardware/software department and we really need them to be a leader in tech innovation, not another HBO (which is no longer the gold standard for programming anyway – Netflix is!).
A complete do over of AppleTV would seem to be in order if they want to have a platform for us to actually pleasantly VIEW this original content, yes?…
I think HBO is on par with Netflix. They have a better selection of better quality movies, but Netflix has more hit series. In fact, I just watched “The O A” on Netflix over the past two days. I’m not going to spoil the surprise, but the basic premise is about dying and coming back to life. Netflix has another hit on their hands.
If Apple includes quality series content then Apple Music will grow faster.
The HBO interface needs a major work-over. Netflix offers a superior interface, much faster rate of original material and just an all around “better” experience. There have been BRILLIANT HBO series, no doubt. But they are not very frequent and the turn around time for the following season is quite long.
Netflix is dropping 5-6 times the amount of original material and moves from device to device in a superior fashion. Trying to watch a series on HBO using their app is awkward in comparison, although it’s still better than Amazon Prime.
I really think Netflix is the model to beat these days and HBO needs to catch up. It’s probably worth it to watch Game of Thrones and WestWorld, but they’re just not creating a very large amount of original material when you compare them to Netflix. It’s more expensive too!
Speaking of Netflix, have they been hacked again?
Just went through a little issue where our account was hijacked, the profile names changed, and a profile deleted. To be fair, Netflix did notice there was something odd going on with the account and they notified my wife.
Spooked my wife a bit. Don’t think anyone spoofed her or hacked into one of our Macs. We’re keeping an eye on things.
My wife is now changing the particulars on some other accounts where she used the same user name/password info that was used for Netflix.
Not sure how it happened. We do share the account with our extended family next door, but everybody uses Apple stuff: Macs, iPads, iPhones, AppleTVs. Everything, including our Apple devices, got de-registered though. Now I have to go through all that again.
There is some slight consolation. Whoever got into our Netflix account registered an Android device… and was watching something at the time they got disconnected.
Create shows like Game of Thrones and Westword.
Create one new series for every genre.
Make them available exclusively on the Apple TV.
And here we go another disaster in the making
Not interested in Apple movies or television.
This is classic money-searching-for-an-idea.
Besides, there’s way too much content these days, most or much of it bad.
But with billions in cash, why not give it a try? Maybe they’ll produce the first great virtual reality movie.
Before trying to see what sticks to the wall, Apple should use their vast fortune to start to supply top of the line Nvidia video cards in all their computers, upgrade their file system, invest more, not less, in programming and scripting tools and provide 3D scanning tools for consumers to try producing virtual reality. There was a scary post earlier that rang true, that swift could be used on Microsoft or Linux, so that Apple could stop selling computers, and that programmers from other os environments could continue to support the rewarding iOS App Store, thus reducing Apple’s hardware support responsibility to only iOS items.
On TIOBE Swift maintains their position from last January at 14. In comparison Google’s Dart language which does pretty much everything Swift does but across a broader range of platforms from Browser to Server and also mobile has risen 9 places to 17, 3 places behind Swift. Might be something to keep an eye on as a developer.
Instead of Leading Apple becomes a Follower, very sad.
Is Apple becoming Yahoo?
Tim come lately will probably have so much Liberal content, looks like it’s a sell.
With the leadership team in place at Apple right now, I would not be surprised to see Apple chasing after Toms shoes tomorrow. You know, because hipsters like them.
Me too!
Apple have conclusively show they’ve no idea about how to bring AppleTV to market as a serious proposition rather than a hobby.
Credit to Amazon, they’re leading in the home space and Apple are schlepping along way behind with overpriced and underperforming hardware. The AppleTV in the UK is a joke for TV.