Apple doesn’t want to be the rich TV+ uncle anymore

Apple knew that TV+ isn’t a household name like Netflix or HBO, so it had to do something to rally the troops around the idea of a streaming service with a good ol’ price war. The other thing it did is set TV+ apart from the competition by carefully curating the quality and thematic range of the original programming it ordered, away from Netflix’s approach that throws anything at the wall to see what sticks.

This resulted in some really high quality award-winning TV series, documentaries, or even MLS streaming exclusivity, but also exorbitant expenses that Apple is now trying to curb. In the effort to make TV+ a household name, Apple loosened its famously tight purse strings and showered Hollywood with money to deliver gems that earned it a record 13 Academy Award nominations this year alone.

For the new season 4 of the Morning Show, for instance, Apple is having to shower its cast with money to the tune of $50 million in actor expenses alone. Another example are the $250 million Apple spent on ordering the Masters of the Air WWII series that critics acclaimed, but not a lot of people watched.

As a result, Apple’s entertainment chief Eddy Cue is now increasingly spending their time in budget meetings with its profligate Hollywood producer partners, trying to rein in their expenditures and will probably curb its original programming a bit to make the TV+ ends meet. 

Granted, what’s true for Apple is also true for the perceived winner of the streaming wars, Netflix, which will also cut programming budgets, but it has a double the market share lead over the next most popular streaming service so it can more easily take a pause to look around in the post-Gilded Streaming Age era.