Apple TV Plus Shows the Challenges for Tech Giants in Media

A beloved brand and near limitless resources don’t guarantee success in the challenging television space.

Apple CEO Tim Cook announcing Apple TV Plus

Much has been written about the war for your living room. About big tech’s inevitable invasion of the television industry. There’s change afoot and money to be made, with content going online and consumer trends changing rapidly.

Silicon Valley’s darlings were poised to make a move.

Among them, eyes have long been on Apple. The company is famous for having disrupted entire industries and introduced new product categories. Its next target, we’ve been told again and again, was the television industry.

Perhaps most importantly, the company currently reports almost a quarter of a trillion dollars in cash on hand. That’s the kind of war chest that could make a splash, even in a massive and monied industry like media.

But time and again, the tech giant has disappointed.

A Foot in the Door Without Coming Inside

Apple’s flirtation with TV begins over a decade ago. The same year that Apple released the game-changing iPhone, they also launched a set-top box called Apple TV.

As Netflix rose to prominence and the entire media industry moved towards the web, this would have seemed to be an early advantage for Apple, who could easily jump in to the fray.

They never did. In fact, after taking the helm of the company, CEO Tim Cook called Apple TV little more than a “hobby”. As such, the product saw infrequent updates, and fell behind the competition as streaming devices from Roku and others came to dominate.

For ten years, there have been predictions that Apple would create a smart television set. That never materialized either.

For years it was speculated that Apple would launch a television set.

Shifting Strategies

For about a decade now, an Apple video streaming service has been rumored to have been in the works.

In one instance, Apple apparently approached the TV networks about creating such a service, but couldn’t strike a deal. By then a juggernaut in the tech industry, Apple was used to getting its own way when it threw money around. The TV execs on the other hand, had witnessed what Apple had done to the music industry, and didn’t want to end up in a similar situation.

Following that failure, CEO Tim Cook declared that apps were the future of television. Therefor, Apple TV never needed to be anything more than an app platform. It was an endorsement of the status quo, at least as far as Apple and TV were concerned.

While inspirational tech CEOs’ insights are often considered sagely, this one from Cook has been proven quite wrong, as the abundance of apps have created a complicated mess for consumers.

As this problem was already becoming apparent, Apple turned its attention to aggregation. Rather than build a Netflix-style library, they’d build a guide that would help tame the streaming chaos.

While I can’t knock the idea, the execution wasn’t there. I’ve frequently cited a quote by analyst Colin Dixon that nails why:

[Apple’s] video strategy is centered around cementing the Apple ecosystem in its customers lives, not creating market leading video services.

Pressing Forward, Still Problematic

Now, clearly, Apple is back at it, with the launch of Apple TV Plus. But while the company has managed to deliver its long-anticipated streaming service, the evidence of the company’s struggles in the TV space are all around.

Famous for its “Walled Garden” approach of delivering highly curated experiences on its devices and services, Apple’s approach has ruffled feathers among the writers and showrunners it needs to create content in-house. The tech giant has reportedly been turned down or had projects go awry due to creative conflicts. J.J. Abrams even turned down a half-billion dollar deal from the tech giant, opting instead for smaller paycheck from Time Warner with fewer strings attached.

Apple TV Plus’s flagship show, The Morning Show, has been poorly received by critics despite its high price tag.

Early reviews of Apple TV Plus have shown that even when the company gets its way, the results leave much to be desired. Mediocre is a word that came up a lot. And the poster child for Apple TV Plus is “The Morning Show”, a series laden with big-name celebrities and exorbitant production costs (reportedly over $15 million per episode), but panned by critics.

Even for companies like Apple with essentially unlimited resources, developing original content is a big gamble.