SAN FRANCISCO — Television is one of the few screens that has Apple hasn’t conquered, but that may soon change. The world’s richest company appears ready to aim for its own Emmy-worthy programming along the lines of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and Netflix’s “Stranger Things.”
Apple lured away two longtime TV executives Jaime Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg from Sony Corp. in June and has given them $1 billion to spend on original shows during the next year, according to a Wall Street Journal report quoting unnamed people.
The programming would only be available on a subscription channel, most likely bundled with the company’s existing Apple Music streaming service. Apple declined to comment.
While $1 billion is a lot of money, it’s a drop in the bucket for Apple and its $262 billion cash hoard. But it’s still enough to vault Apple into the top tier of tech-industry outsiders producing their own slates of television shows.
Hollywood has long shuddered at the thought of Apple training its sights on TV the way it once did on the music business.
Movies and television have proven much harder for Apple to crack. The company’s interest in transforming television has been an open secret for years, but Hollywood has so far spurned Apple’s efforts to make itself a digital middleman for video.
In a way, Netflix beat Apple to the punch with its ground-breaking video streaming service. Launched in 2007, that service pioneered “binge watching” of entire TV seasons on any device with internet. That gave new life to existing shows such as “Breaking Bad,” whose creator credits Netflix with its survival, and spawned the creation of other series made for bingeing.
All of that has increased the pressure on Apple to step up its game in TV — not least because the increasing popularity of streaming is hurting its business of renting and selling video from iTunes.
Apple “doesn’t want to be left behind,” said Debby Ruth, senior vice president of consumer research firm Magid. “This is a way for them to put a stake in the ground.”
This year, the company released its first two original series — “Planet of the Apps” and “Carpool Karaoke” — on its Apple Music service, which has 27 million subscribers. But neither show has generated much buzz or acclaim.
The recent hiring of Erlicht and Van Amburg signaled Apple’s intent to make bigger splash. The executives have helped orchestrate several TV hits, including AMC’s “Breaking Bad,” and more recently branched out into video streaming with “The Crown,” which landed on Netflix last year and is up for 13 Emmy nominations in the Sept. 17 ceremony.
Apple also has a not-so-secret weapon: hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads already in the hands of faithful fans. It could easily transform those into a marketing platform to lure users to its TV service.
But the company has a steep hill to climb.
Netflix has more than 100 million worldwide subscribers and a video library that will add 1,000 hours of original programming this year alone. And HBO has become the Emmys’ pacesetter since branching into original programming 20 years ago.
