21st Century Fox CEO Says Apple Still Just 'Dabbling' in Original TV Content

[macduke]

Imagine being an anime fan. Easily 160+ anime every year.

Please don’t make me imagine such a thing!

 

[ipponrg]

A) They hired some new people
B) Is it going to be a walled garden or will it be a part of Apple Music on Android?

If you work in tech especially in marketing, I would really take those hire announcements as a grain of fluff. Let their actions and results speak.

Is Apple Music available on Roku?

 

[fairuz]

Imagine being an anime fan. Easily 160+ anime every year.

I can't imagine being an anime fan. The stuff is pumped out way faster than they can think of good ideas. I'm going to trust Miyazaki on what the problem is.

Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!.

Too bad cause I love the visual artwork.

 

[HungryTech]

So much talent out there Apple is sleeping on. Like what the F**k is going on with this company.

 

[sunseeker]

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent TV Show,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

 

[ksec]

I've spent a little bit of time in the media industry and I do know that making original programming is horribly expensive.

Even the sums that Apple are spending this year are simply not enough when compared with Amazon, Netflix et al - plus the fact that they all have bigger libraries of original content as they've been at this for a few years.

I don't necessarily think that Apple is going to pay for older content - it's not that marketable and I think that since Netflix caught existing studios napping & built their business on serving out archive content on the web, I doubt that they'd give Apple their archive content for anything approaching a reasonable price.

As I mentioned above, the only way that I can see this being justified is that they're showing that they have some skin in the game before they make a big big purchase of a production company OR sign exclusive production deals with mega producers i.e. your JJ Abrams of this world.

I'm still scratching my head though - this is all going to be really expensive.

Apple have entered in a war that Netflix, Amazon (and soon to be Disney) are already participating in and a talent hiring spree/arms race that is going to get eye wateringly expensive.

And as the Solo movie has proved, the TV/Movie business is a tough one and content can easily misfire (this stuff is hard!) - even 'sure bets' can sometimes fall flat on their face.

As for pricing, perhaps it'll work as a 'bundle' added onto Apple Music i.e. like Amazon Prime.

I just don't know how this can work though unless Apple are prepared to go really really big with this and spend at least $5b a year on this.

And since Beats was by far their biggest acquisition, is it really in their nature to do this? Apple have the cash, but they are very frugal in their spending, usually.

But as I mentioned in another post, perhaps Apple are going to go all out on AVR and to sell AVR hardware, they'll need AVR programming as part of this i.e. we'll all be sitting at home with our Apple TV boxes and Apple Glasses watching 3D AVR TV (you know, like we did with 3D TV. Except we didn't).

So doing this could make strategic sense - plus the monthly recurring revenue. I just don't know. Seems to be an expensive way to get monthly subscriptions and to sell some 3D Glasses. But let's see. I'm sure that Apple doesn't spend a few billion lightly.

Or maybe this is a little bit of R&D as they're getting ready to buy Disney.

You mentioned all the problems I have with this.

Except AVR. Or Apple Glasses. I doubt this has anything to do with Movie at all.
And like iPhone, Apple played or toyed with Rokr first, to get a feel of things. Apple used CDN and Cloud before starting any of their massive DC investment and their own backbone network. Apple waited until late before they investing more into their Apple Retail Property ownership. Apple, despite they have more cash then any other company on earth, are easily the most conservative and stringent in spending and focus on what they do best. Value Creation.

They spend $10B R&D and expect to have $100B in return in the long term.

What has Carpool Karaoke, Planet of the Apps done? Zero. They could have partner with someone and created something. Instead they did it on their own.

Ever since Iovine has arrived at Apple, nothing about their "Media" business side fits my taste or the old Apple's taste. There is a reason Jobs never hired this guy. And it is literally like, Hey Tim, you know you have $250B and don't know what to do with it? Why not do Original Content?