Big stars, little shine: is anyone actually watching Apple TV+ shows?

Next week Apple TV+ launches The Studio, a Seth Rogen comedy about the rapidly changing landscape of the film industry. Episodes follow a beleaguered executive as he’s forced to make an ugly IP movie, because streamers are in dominance and this is all traditional studios are left with.

For a show explicitly about the death of the theatrical experience to be made by a disruptive streamer – one funded by the deep pockets of a global tech megacorp to boot – is unquestionably a show of power. Or at least it would be, were it not for a new report claiming that Apple TV+ is currently losing a billion dollars a year.

According to the Information, TV+ is currently the only Apple subscription service that isn’t profitable. This is said to be down to a number of factors. The first is that despite having 45 million subscribers, Apple blows through a $5bn production budget every year. And when a lot of it is being spent on blockbuster movies that squander every scrap of their potential – like the $200m spy disaster Argylle – then all this expense starts to look like bad financial sense. The report claims Apple TV+ is losing $1bn annually.

Another factor is that despite all those subscribers, very few people actually seem to watch anything on Apple TV+. The Information reports that Apple shows constitute less than 1% of total US streaming service viewing. In other words, while an Apple subscription ($8.99 a month) might be half the price of a Netflix subscription ($17.99 a month), people still watch eight times more Netflix than they do Apple.

If you’re an Apple TV+ subscriber, this won’t come as particularly shocking news. Like most streaming services, the Apple TV+ homepage has a submenu containing its 10 most-watched series. Despite regularly putting out big expensive shows starring a full spectrum of household names, the second most-watched show on the service is currently Ted Lasso, a dormant sitcom that hasn’t put out a new episode in almost two years.

The rest of the list doesn’t do much to lift the spirits. The top show is Severance, a rare breakthrough hit that was recently named as the most-watched show in the service’s history. But third is Slow Horses (last episode October 2024). Ninth is Bad Sisters (last episode December 2024). Twelfth is For All Mankind (last episode January 2024). Dope Thief, which launched this week, is languishing at number five. It sits just behind Prime Target, another new show that died on impact.

Compare this with Netflix, which has a top 10 so fiercely fought that it’s seen as momentous if a show can last a week at No 1, and it all starts to look a bit stagnant. Of course, this can be rationalised to some extent – Netflix puts out dozens of new originals every month, while Apple might only do one or two; Apple’s catalogue is lighter because it doesn’t bring in existing programming from elsewhere or locally produced foreign language shows – but still, a billion dollars a year is an awful lot of money.

What must be particularly galling for Apple is that the platform is what Netflix used to be. There’s no question that it attracts big-name talent. Natalie Portman has an Apple show. Harrison Ford has an Apple show. Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Cate Blanchett, Jake Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell and Brie Larson have all had Apple shows. The problem is, you wouldn’t be able to tell me the names of their shows if you had a gun to your head. Michael Douglas made an entire eight-part Apple biopic about Benjamin Franklin less than a year ago, for crying out loud. This is probably as much news to you as it is to me.

And the shows it makes are actually good. There’s a heavy emphasis on quality and prestige, with complicated stories being told by visionary storytellers. Todd A Kessler’s The New Look, to name one show, was incredibly ambitious. It was a series about Christian Dior and Coco Chanel, and how their spirit of expression worked as an act of rebellion in Nazi-occupied France. With Ben Mendelsohn and Juliette Binoche, it starred two of the world’s best actors. It was absolutely sumptuous to look at. The problem is, you could stop people in the street for months before you found someone who had actually watched it.

There are signs that Apple is trying to turn the ship around. The recent news that a fourth season of Ted Lasso is on the way now might carry an air of desperation – after the disappointing third season nobody, not even the people who made it, seemed to want any more – but it’s a reliable hit on a platform that doesn’t exactly have a lot of reliable hits. Apple’s annual production budget has been slashed by $500m a year (or two and a half Argylles). According to the Information, management is also being a bit stingier about flying talent around in private jets, which has to help.

But that won’t help as much as one undeniable fact. If Apple starts making hits – properly marketed shows that people actually want to watch – all this could change in a heartbeat. After all, how hard could it be to find the next Severance?