Apple TV Dethrones HBO
A well-deserved victory lap for Apple today after winning big at the Emmys. Award shows remain mostly silly and subjective, but they're an interesting directional proxy for power in the various industries and, well, Apple just beat not only Netflix, but HBO too.
The victory also cemented Apple’s now-critical place in the entertainment industry.
Fueled by “Widow’s Bay,” which set a record for most Emmy wins for a comedy series, with 14, as well as sci-fi series “Pluribus” and “Slow Horses,” Apple broke a long-running streak on Monday night. Since 2003, HBO and Netflix have been the two outlets to claim bragging rights on Emmys night. Apple’s 28 awards this year easily outpaced both.
Technically, FX won the most Emmys one of those years (2024), but yeah, it has been a run of dominance by Netflix and HBO.1 And the latter is especially interesting since there's been an 'Apple TV is the new HBO' meme for a while now.2 I'm not sure I can take credit for calling it, but I did bring up the notion six years ago on an episode of John Gruber's The Talk Show podcast. It just seemed pretty clear what they were going for – while HBO, at the time, looked to be heading down the toilet thanks to their takeover by AT&T.
Apple’s entry into Hollywood less than a decade ago — the company started buying projects in 2017, and debuted its streaming service in 2019 — was greeted with skepticism. Other technology companies, including Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, had also started making scripted TV series before quickly fleeing town. Becoming an entertainment studio is as expensive as finding hits is a slow, unpredictable and frustrating process.
While Apple TV remains little watched compared with its competitors, the company has stuck with it.
“When we started this seven years ago, it’s hard to imagine that we’d be here today,” said Eddy Cue, a top Apple executive who started the entertainment division and hired the company’s lead Hollywood executives, Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht.
Again, it was not that hard to imagine. Apple had a long history of going for the higher end of the market. And for going for quality while others went for quantity. But the latter actually bit them a bit when it came to sign-ups and ratings. Unlike the other streaming services, they opted not to buy up big back catalogs. I'm not sure they fully understood that it wasn't really about juicing their numbers, but about churn prevention. People would finish their shows and have nothing else to watch on Apple TV. That was obviously a problem.
It's less of a problem seven years in, but it's still kind of a problem! Which is why I made the case that they should buy – who else – HBO a couple years ago, before Netflix tried and Paramount eventually did (which I also recommended a week before trying to spend Tim Cook's money). Well, technically they still haven't yet! So maybe there's hope yet.3 Apple clearly could still use such content:
The company’s streaming service, which, unlike Netflix and Disney, doesn’t have a library of old movies and TV series, is still not widely watched, however. In July, it made up 0.5 percent of all TV viewing time, a fraction of its competitors’, according to Nielsen. Netflix attracted nearly 8 percent of all viewing time in the United States, Disney’s streaming services came in at close to 5 percent, and free streaming services like Roku and Tubi also had more viewership.
Though Apple’s top hits, like “Ted Lasso” and “Severance,” draw big audiences, the shows that won big at the Emmys struggled to find viewers. “Widow’s Bay” was the least watched of all the best comedy nominees, Nielsen said. In the drama category, Apple’s three entrants — “Pluribus,” “Your Friends & Neighbors,” and “Slow Horses” — ranked among the least-watched drama series nominees, and were dwarfed by one of the biggest hits in television, “The Pitt” on HBO Max.
Again, if the Emmy wins are any kind of proxy, Apple is now likely in a pretty good place, as long as they don't mind slow-and-steady growth. Which they clearly don't! Certainly, their strategy seems better than it was several years back, and it has always been far better in television than film, where the quality remains overall pretty questionable.
But is Apple TV in the old HBO place? I made the quip earlier on this news and Mario Sundar pushed back on the notion that Apple TV content can hold a candle to peak HBO content. I actually agree with that. While the average overall quality of Apple's shows are higher than those on Netflix or Prime Video, they still don't have the type of 'A+' content that HBO was regularly pumping out at their peak. The Wire. Sopranos. Deadwood. Succession. Etc. All of those make even the best of Apple TV look like child's play.
Apple TV, in my mind, has a lot of 'B' and 'B+' shows. I personally think Slow Horses is the best show on the service and I'd give it an 'A-'. Some people live for Severance, I'm not one of them. Pluribus has been pretty good, but far from great to date. Ditto with Widow's Bay. A few great episodes, but not nearly as uniform as the HBO hits of old.
Further, HBO, despite the current ownership turnover, does seem to have found its footing again post-AT&T. Sure House of the Dragon isn't quite Game of Thrones, but it's also far better than the last season of Game of Thrones. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms may end up better than both. I've not gotten into The Pitt, but clearly many people have! The White Lotus is more up and down, but its highs are higher than anything on Apple TV as of yet.
Anyway, Apple TV is still young and growing into that catalog. And it's no surprise that they brought Ted Lasso back, which was the one show that seemed to cross-over into an actual hit in those early days.
Apple has their awards now. But as Netflix can attest, it's tough to keep them – they just had their "worst" showing at the Emmys in a decade. Maybe they should try to buy HBO – again!
One more thing: nice aside about Eddy Cue toasting the Apple TV team with tequila shots. Also taking one: new CEO John Ternus, who was at the awards show rocking his fresh, new, and still unreleased iPhone Duo. A natural.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 Yes, yes, Netflix had been trying to become HBO faster than HBO could become Netflix... ↩
2 Technically it was 'Apple TV+' is the new HBO before that plus went out the window... ↩
3 Or, you know, Disney is sitting right there... ↩
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