Why Doesn’t Apple TV+ Market Its Shows Better?

Did you know Apple TV+ has a show you can watch right now that stars Harrison Ford giving one of his best late-career performances as a therapist mentoring Jason Segel? No? What about the show where Maya Rudolph stars as a woman who decides to get back in touch with her generous side after nabbing an $87 billion divorce settlement? Or the one where Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram star in an adaptation of a Laura Lippman novel? Or the one where Colin Farrell is a private detective in L.A.?

Well, you’re not alone. (Those shows, respectively, are Shrinking, Loot, Lady in the Lake, and Sugar, by the way.)

That observation is nothing new; Apple TV+ has long been the streaming service that housed unknown gems just beneath the surface. Unless the show is Ted Lasso, or Severance, or the movie is a Martin Scorsese or Ridley Scott picture, Apple doesn’t seem to devote much ad spending to get people to actually watch its content.

This became very apparent recently with the release of Bad Monkey, a TV show adaptation of a Carl Hiassen novel starring Vince Vaughn as a down-on-his-luck private detective investigating some shenanigans in the Florida Keys. Had this been 20 years ago, Vince Vaughn in a Carl Hiassen adaptation would have been a great mid-budget movie, and probably would have made a decent amount of profit at the box office. Now, it’s a show on a streaming service that hardly anyone seems to watch. Apparently, Bad Monkey also features a killer soundtrack full of Tom Petty covers, but I wouldn’t have known that had I not seen this tweet:

So you know that Apple TV+ show "Bad Monkey"? No? OK there's an Apple show called "Bad Monkey" where Vince Vaughn is a detective solving a mystery in the Florida Keys. It's based on a Carl Hiaasen novel. With me? So that show has a soundtrack of artists doing Tom Petty covers.

— Lon Harris (@Lons) August 24, 2024

Apple has spent more than $20 billion on original TV shows, movies and other content since launching Apple TV+ in 2019, and doesn’t have a lot to show for it. Recent Neilsen statistics show that the streaming service averages fewer views in a month than Netflix gets in one day — 0.2 percent of U.S. TV views compared to Netflix’s whopping 8 percent.

As such, Apple said it will rein in spending on streaming projects and will start to license more titles to its streaming library. A shame, because if those original titles landed anywhere other than Apple, they would be surefire hits. Apple doesn’t know who its audience is anymore. Maybe it never did.

Like Amazon, Apple has plenty of other departments that can turn a profit instead of its streaming service. All those MacBooks and Airpods and iPhones can help finance the combined $500 million it took to make Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon. But Amazon at least works with directors and producers to ensure wide theatrical windows and good physical media sales; Apple gave Killers a limited theatrical run before its Oscars campaign and has yet to find a distribution deal for any physical media release for CODA, the first streaming movie to win Best Picture. (One would think that would be something noteworthy to put on the Apple TV+ homepage, but alas.) Just this week, Apple announced that its George Clooney/Brad Pitt action comedy would be in theaters for one week before hitting Apple TV+.

It seems like Apple is just selling its streaming shows and movies to already loyal Apple customers with no thought for a broader audience. There’s no need to market an iPhone anymore; if you’re brand loyal to an iPhone, you’re probably never switching. But that way of thinking doesn’t work when the product is an Isaac Asimov adaptation instead of a laptop. Apple’s marketing Apple TV+ as if it were a legacy tech brand and not a scrappy upstart.

The world should know Apple TV+ as having the deepest, richest, highest-caliber library in all of streaming. It’s a marvel that shows like Foundation, Silo, Dark Matter, Presumed Innocent, Pachinko, The Afterparty, For All Mankind, Mythic Quest, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, Sunny, Sugar, Slow Horses, Palm Royale, Black Bird, and Masters of Air can all exist at the same time, let alone be on the same streaming network.

Apple TV+ should be faring better in the streaming wars, but until it figures out who its audience is, it will never catch up. Enjoy all those great shows while you can before Apple cancels them.