🟧 The beautiful mess of Apple TV+
Bad for business, good for content?
Noah Davis: The knives are out for Apple TV+. In Bloomberg, Lucas Shaw details how the company is trying to “rein in Hollywood spending after years of losses.” At Business Insider, Peter Kafka prosecutes the case as well. At first glance, Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue has a point: $20 billion spent to acquire 18 million United States subscribers, according to the subscription-tracking service Antenna, is tough math. (By comparison, Netflix boasts 83 million in the U.S. and Canada, and 277 million worldwide. Paramount+ has 71 million, lost half a billion dollars in the final quarter of 2023, is dragging down its parent company, and everyone thinks should be killed.)
So I get where Cue comes from, but I think he’s wrong. In a world filled with endless undifferentiated content garbage, Apple TV+ offers something different. Pulling back would be a mistake.
A partial survey of its shows: Hijack, Presumed Innocent, and Loot are vehicles for the biggest celebrity actors. Severance, Dark Matter, and Silo provide visions of dystopia. Ted Lasso and Mythic Quest were pandemic salves. The Morning Show, Platonic, and Shrinking sometimes work and sometimes don’t, but the star power of the dramedies is undeniable. (Harrison Ford being a curmudgeonly dick is worth the $9.99 monthly subscription cost alone.) A plug for Slow Horses, Bad Sisters, Foundation, and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There are more worth watching in this strangely ordered list from TV Guide. [Ed. Slow Horses season 1 is perfect and would have been a monster hit on any other service.]
I won’t argue that all of Apple TV+’s shows are great, or even good, but the hit rate is much higher than other streaming options. (It has been called “Prestige Dad TV” lol, and fair.) And everything looks exceptional and expensive, including its Major League Soccer games, which are lightyears ahead of the ESPN and Fox productions of the past. Ironically, Ted Lasso, the service’s breakout hit, is the only show I’ve watched to fail this test. The soccer looks terrible, and the details are constantly wrong.
This is a newsletter that celebrates rejecting how algorithms flattened culture, and Apple TV’s offerings very much succeed in this regard. Lean in, Mr. Cue, lean in. So what if Severance costs $20 million an episode? Apple has a cash pile close to the GDP of Hungary and there are articles headlined “Apple Has a Problem—and Investors Should Love It” about the company’s Scrooge McDuckian dollar hoard. Keep making shows that look great and have a point of view. Like cheap Uber rides or subscription meal kits in the 2010s, our consumption habits are being heavily subsidized by Silicon Valley and we should enjoy it while it lasts rather than dismiss it.
For sure, the Apple TV+ team could make smarter decisions in purely business terms. And, yes, $700 million for Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, and Argylle might not be the best use of that Cupertino cash. I’m sorry but there is no world in which spending $100 million for Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson to talk about marketing the moon landing, as in Apple’s recent production Fly Me to the Moon, is a good idea.
What might be? Make the service free. (Note: I am not a business guy!) Eighteen million users paying $9.99 a month is slightly less than $2.2 billion in revenue a year. That’s a drop in the nearly $400 billion the company generates per year. Cut the price to zero, grow the service, keep paying top dollar to make good stuff, and write it all off as a marketing expense. More people should see Silo.
Noah Davis is a co-founder of Three Point Four Media with very discerning taste.
Best of One Thing
If you’re a new subscriber, look back through the archives for our greatest hits. We send out short newsletters on taste, authenticity, and recommendation culture every Tuesday and Thursday.
Summer linen report A brand-by-brand review of airy summer shirts, IRL vetted only.
Voice, trust, taste, scarcity An essay on the importance of unique perspectives in the digital media industry.
Mocktail summer What makes a good NA drink? Nate investigates spritzes and sharbats.
“Cutre” On the special Spanish word for tacky roughness that can also be desirable, like a dive bar or a grumpy waiter.
The disappearing Insta grid We’re tired of posting; the new cool thing is to have an empty account.
Two of the best on Apple TV are Pachinko and Dickinson.
and tehran!!!! sooo good