Apple TV+ Streaming Service Coming Later This Year With All Original Content

During the week leading up to Apple’s big press event on March 25th, the company quietly rolled out updates to its iPad and iMac lineup, as well as a new version of its AirPod wireless earbuds, all with relatively little fanfare. So when the big announcement day arrived, the attention was not on new hardware, but rather on Apple’s diverse offerings of “services,” which have been a growing focus for Apple over the last several years, with the introduction of iCloud and Apple Music. CEO Tim Cook announced a number of new services, including an electronic magazine and newspaper subscription service called Apple News+, a subscription service for mobile video games called Apple Arcade, and even an Apple-branded credit card. But the most highly anticipated announcement was the company’s upcoming video streaming service, called Apple TV+, which will launch later this year, probably around the same time as another newcomer to the streaming marketplace, Disney+. What will Apple TV+ offer to distinguish itself from the ever-expanding list of competitors?

Following in the footsteps of premium cable channels such as HBO and Showtime, all of the major streaming services currently available (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon’s Prime Video, etc.) got their start by licensing existing movies and TV shows. Later, after establishing a big enough user-base to bankroll independent productions, each streaming service began investing in original content. Apple TV+ is unique in that it will only offer original content available nowhere else. Apple is choosing to spend its considerable budget for the project — estimated at about $2 billion per year — on what the company calls the “highest-quality storytelling.” As a result, its catalog will be dense with celebrity-backed projects, but the total quantity of content on offer will be tiny when compared to that of its biggest competition. Because of this, Apple is positioning its streaming service not as a potential replacement for something like Netflix, but instead as more of an add-on — yet another addition to the do-it-yourself bundle of streaming services that cord-cutters have been relying on to replace cable. It remains to be seen whether this approach will prove successful in the long run. What we do know is that Apple TV+ will be an ad-free, on-demand service, and that all content will be available both via streaming and via download for offline viewing. Apple has said that pricing will be announced this fall. While Apple’s hardware products, such as iPhones and MacBooks, are priced at the high end of the market, its services (such as the $10-per-month Apple Music streaming service) tend to be more competitively priced.

A project on this scale takes time, and Apple TV+ has been in the works for years now. In 2017, Apple hired executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg away from Sony Pictures Television, where they had worked together since 2005 to develop hit shows like AMC’s Breaking Bad, NBC’s The Blacklist, and Netflix’s The Crown. At Apple, the pair has reportedly blown past Apple’s original $1 billion budget for content creation, with about 30 shows currently in the works, plus several movies. At the press event, we caught a glimpse of some of the star-studded projects in the Apple TV+ pipeline. First, Steven Spielberg will re-intoduce the series "Amazing Stories", which originally aired from 1985-1987 on NBC.  The series will be a collection of standalone science-fiction stories like The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror, but with a more family-friendly vibe. Jenifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, and Steve Carell then announced their new project called The Morning Show, which appears to be a comedy about the workplace gender dynamics at play behind the scenes of a morning news talkshow.

Actors Jason Momoa (Game of Thrones, Aquaman) and Alfre Woodard (12 Years a Slave, Luke Cage) introduced a new sci-fi drama called See, which takes place in a distant future wherein the entire human race is blind, and nobody is even sure whether the sense of sight ever even existed in humankind. Next, the talented Pakistani-American actor, comedian, and writer Kumail Nanjiani talked about his show called Little America, which will tell “human stories that feature immigrants.” Big-shot producer/director J.J. Abrams and the singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles together introduced a romantic comedy series called Little Voice, which will feature original songs by Bareilles, and explore “the universal journey of finding your authentic voice in your early 20s.” Big Bird from Sesame Street was joined by another muppet named Cody to announce a new show called Helpsters, intended to introduce the basic concepts of computer coding to young kids.

Finally, Oprah Winfrey dramatically emerged from the darkened stage to announce two new documentaries — one about workplace harassment and another about mental health — along with a new Oprah-branded book club, with author interviews and other live-streamed events. Winfrey said that she chose to partner with Apple TV+ because “the Apple platform allows me to do what I do in a new way.”

Will Apple’s collection of Hollywood A-listers be enough to attract the huge audiences that Apple will need in order to make Apple TV+ a success? Share your thoughts in the related forum thread below.