Is Apple TV+ Already the New HBO?
Ambitious originals, big stars, Emmys, and Oscars add up to a lot more than a mid-tier streamer, and Apple has the money to go much, much bigger.
If Apple’s new sizzle reel for its current and upcoming TV+ originals gives you an HBO vibe, it’s not just because Euphoria composer Labrinth scored it with his signature big synths and pulsing bass.
The stars (Ryan Reynolds, Julianne Moore), the pull quotes (“Apple TV+ consistently produces some of the best entertainment of the modern era” — EW), the awards (Best Picture Oscar for CODA, Emmys for Ted Lasso) and the spectacle (Hanks and Spielberg’s upcoming Masters of the Air) have the unmistakable air of an HBO promo.
The 60-second spot is crisp and vibe-y and makes you curious what all the fuss is about, but that’s only convincing if you have the goods.
Apple TV+ has the goods:
CODA won the Oscar for Best Picture on Apple’s first serious try.
Ted Lasso has won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy the last two years, and the series has 11 Emmy in just the first two seasons.
Mystery-box drama series Severance scored 14 Emmy nominations, won in two technical categories, and has a pedigreed cast (John Turturro, Christopher Walken, Patricia Arquette) that will ensure critical attention for Season 2.
Former HBO chairman and CEO Richard Plepler produced three TV+ originals this year — including limited-series prison drama Black Bird that’s likely to score Golden Globe nominations for stars Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser — and has more TV+ projects incoming.
The 9-episode, World War II epic Masters of the Air has maybe the best (and HBO-iest) lineup of directors ever assembled for a limited series that’s not on HBO: Cary Joji Fukunaga (HBO’s True Detective), Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Marvel Studios’ Captain Marvel and HBO’s Room 104), Tim Van Patten (HBO’s The Sopranos and Perry Mason), and Dee Rees (Netflix’s Oscar-nominated Mudbound).
Metacritic scores Apple original series as having an average critics’ score of 69/100. Only HBO (75/100) is currently higher.
In the next year, Apple TV+’s deeper move into live sports and Warner Bros. Discovery’s relaunch of HBO Max and Discovery+ as a combined streamer called (apparently) “Max” threaten to distract them both from making and marketing top-tier film and TV.
Quality matters. “More is not better,” Richard Plepler often said when he ran HBO. “Only better is better.” I think he’s still right — maybe more right — in a future where 4-6 global streamers will need scale and marketing and franchises and good reviews and good word of mouth and awards consideration to keep viewers’ attention. The next Ted Lasso or White Lotus matters.
HBO’s Brand Depends on What Happens Next
HBO has long surrounded its originals with other stuff — sports in the early years, a streaming catalog since the HBO Max launch in 2020, big theatrical movies all along — but the DNA of the HBO brand is running buzzy, critically respected, awards-y, best-in-class, originals at a time on Sunday nights.
Despite Warner’s mergers and layoffs the last several years and fuzzy branding around what’s an HBO original and what’s a Max original — it all comes out of the Casey Bloys machine — the output has been inarguably good:
HBO / HBO Max led all networks and streamers this year with 39 Primetime Emmy wins, including Outstanding Drama for Succession and Outstanding Limited Series for The White Lotus.
HBO’s Hacks or Barry would have won the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy but for Ted Lasso.
House of the Dragon was a massive hit that put the franchise on solid footing after Game of Thrones’s not-great final season.
The tonnage of other great HBO projects in 2022 is impressive: Station Eleven, Industry, Euphoria, Winning Time, Landscapers, The Gilded Age, Peacemaker, We Own This City, Irma Vep, The Righteous Gemstones.
For all its challenges and distractions, HBO is the closest thing to a moated castle in the new Warner Bros. Discovery. The leadership is intact, has the resources to keep green-lighting hits, and has the creative relationships to keep making them.
A rebrand of HBO Max to just “Max” and big influx of not-HBO-material reality franchises like 90 Day Fiancé and Property Brothers could diminish HBO. Whether it does depends a lot on how well the user interface for the combined streamer and the marketing around HBO originals identifies HBO as a programming brand.
What I expect to see from the combined HBO Max / Discovery streamer is a user interface that focuses on key brands, which is the organizational approach that Disney+, Paramount+, and Discovery+ are taking. Those streamers present five or six flagship brands with equal weight and emphasis whether you watch them or not.
The major threat to HBO’s programming brand is that consumers will stop thinking of it as a programming brand, which could result from an interface that makes it no better or worse than TLC or HGTV (like Discovery+) or an interface that flattens every show into algorithmic cogs without regard to brand (like Netflix).
What I hope to see from the combined streamer is a more dynamic organizational approach that elevates the nameplates and genres that individual subscribers tend to watch and diminishes what they tend not to watch. That approach would leave room for new and trending titles but not annoy you with stuff you don’t want to watch.
If I watch mostly HBO and CNN, the streamer should come to look like a service anchored by those nameplates. If I watch mostly HGTV and Magnolia, it should look much different. HBO’s continuing identity depends a lot on whether and how the combined streamer presents that identity.
Apple TV Can Afford to Stay Focused
Apple is not under the same pressure to grow TV+ into an everything-for-everyone service that Warner Bros. Discovery will be with its combined HBO Max / Discovery streamer. Apple is a $2 trillion company with hundreds of billions of dollars in cash reserves and can afford to take its time.
Apple’s business plan for TV+ is primarily: (1) to drive services revenue as a platform for subscribing to Paramount+, Starz, BritBox, etc., (2) to add value to the Apple One bundle that includes Apple Music and Apple News+, (3) to function as marketing for all of Apple’s products and services, and (4) to increase the frequency you use Apple’s products and services so you’ll buy the next iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc.
Selling Apple TV 4K devices is secondary to those factors given the availability of the TV app on every major TV platform. What Apple TV 4K does give Apple, though, is a growing installed base of users for the next generation of Apple products, including a mixed-reality headset and updated HomePod in 2023 and a car expected in 2026.
All of which is to say: Apple doesn’t have to signal to subscribers which part of Apple TV+ is the quality brand when the entire service is programmed as the quality brand. HBO — in whatever new digital wrapper its next iteration will live within — has a very different challenge.