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In case you missed it, Apple had an Event today. That’s not an accidental capitalization, they literally had the balls to just call it the Apple Event. Ballsy branding aside, the company let a whole host of new services drop during the event, but the one we’re concerned with is their subscription movie and TV platform, Apple TV+.
To start, the company marched out a new effort to get all your streaming platforms into one App. It’s called Apple TV Channels, and its basically a way to pull together things like Hulu, Amazon, and CBS All Access into one place. It’s ad-free and you only pay for the “channels” you want. This isn’t all that new, considering Apple did this with cable, but now you can put your streamers in too. More of a rebranding and organizational thing, really. It will launch with an update in May, and along with that an Apple TV is is coming to Macs and TVs.
That’s nice and all but its the “+” we care about more. Apple TV+ will be where Apple hosts its original content. At the event they said it is “dedicated to the best stories ever told,” and that was backed up by the likes of J.J. Abrams, Stephen Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, Reese Witherspoon, and Jennifer Aniston (all of whom have shows lined up for the service in some manner or the other). What that truly means is that they’re dedicated to the shows that bring in subscribers. That’s right. To get Apple’s original content you’ll need to pay. It’s a subscription service and will be landing in 100+ countries this Fall. No price point has been announced.
If you pay that you’ll be confirmed to get a reboot of Amazing Stories from Stephen Spielberg; a TV show called The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carell; a show called See starring Jason Momoa and Alfre Woodard; Kumail Nanjiani’s anthology series Little America; children’s programming from Sesame Workshop (the guys who make Sesame Street); the half-hour dramedy Little Voices from J.J. Abrams and Sara Bareilles; some docs and shows from Oprah Winfrey; and more.
It’s a massive lineup of big names making a bunch of interesting shows. We’ll have more details on each as they come out, along with the inevitable trailers, but clearly, Apple isn’t holding back in trying to pull in subscribers. They’re already behind the ball on this so it’s good they’re dumping money into it. The problem is, I don’t know if any of these are true needle movers, though I’m not really the Oprah demographic. To get subscribers in you need that one big show, followed by another, and another to keep them. Apple has the leg up of millions of people already using their platform, but they still need to deliver for people to pay more for it. Do any of these sound like that to you?
