Trouble In Hollywood? A report suggests Apple is facing internal struggles with Apple TV+
Apple TV+ is riding high currently, just days after winning the Oscar for Best Picture for CODA at an Academy Awards ceremony that will, unfortunately, be remembered for “the slap.” But according to a report from Business Insider, Apple TV+ is facing several internal struggles. The article is behind BI’s paywall, so I’ll have to rely on Hartley Charlton’s write-up over at MacRumors.
Two things first: 1) I think on the whole Apple’s done a great job with Apple TV+. It’s just over two years old, but from the outside it feels as well-run as any streaming service out there. 2) I think it’s always worth taking these kind of reports with a grain of salt. It’s tempting to take a report like this at face value, but the reality is there are always lots of things we can’t know from the outside, and sometimes these things can present an inaccurate or skewed perspective.
Two content executives who have worked with Apple TV+ told Business Insider that the streamer's in-house lawyers lack familiarity with common entertainment law practices and executives are expected to check with bosses before making decisions, which slows down the dealmaking and production processes. One executive said that Apple TV+ began streaming a show before a contract was signed, while another said that they had problems simply getting invoices paid.
If true, this sounds like the kind of thing that will get worked out with time as Apple gains more experience working in Hollywood in an industry they historically lack deep familiarity with.
Other sources said that Apple TV+ has a chaotic approach to marketing, including "disruptive, last-minute marketing planning for projects that have been in the works for months; sloppy press rollouts; landing pages for series that weren't ready in time." "They are still marketing like it's an iPhone, not content," one executive told Business Insider. As a result, details of new projects are tightly controlled and kept secret until the last minute, and content partners get little to no information on how their projects are performing with subscribers. Similar concerns were raised by studio executives speaking to The Information last year.
As a former Apple employee, this actually sounds pretty plausible to me. Apple’s valuation of secrecy is well-known. Internally this often leads to people keeping things close to the vest even when that’s not necessary or is counterproductive. I worked for several years and in various roles within Apple Retail. There were times where the corporate side of Retail would roll out new initiatives that they wanted the stores to implement with little detail on how they wanted them implemented. This wasn’t the way things usually went, but it did happen. I recall with one new program I spent a good deal of time emailing back and forth with the head of Apple’s Genius and Creative teams at corporate trying to understand what this new initiative was expected to look like in practice.
Apple purportedly wants to make all of Apple TV+'s content itself to avoid reliance on partners like Warner Bros., but it does not currently have the resources to do so. The company is said to be hoping to rectify some of the immediate workflow issues by hiring more mid-level content executives to manage cost projections and budgeting.
This may well be true given Apple’s desire to control as much of its products from top to bottom, but frankly I’m skeptical of the plausibility of such a strategy given the complexity and scale of TV and movie production combined with Apple’s relative inexperience in the industry.
None of this is damning, and Apple has had some big hits with Apple TV+ in a short time. But it will be interesting to watch the continuing evolution of this service over time.