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In sharp contrast, Netflix, once regarded by Apple CEO Tim Cook as the target opponent of Apple TV+, already has 209 million users. Even Apple lost to its old friend Amazon. As of the second quarter of this year, Amazon Prime Video had more than 180 million users.
Cook had given high hopes to Asimov’s magic.
Just two days ago, on September 24, the first two episodes of the strategic IP work “Base”, which was given high expectations for Apple TV+, officially released. In the science fiction circle, Asimov is regarded as one of the Big Three. (In foreign countries, Asimov, Hein Rhein, and Clark are also known as the three giants of science fiction.) In the North American market, Asimov is one of the science fiction writers with the largest number of fans.
Another reason for Apple’s high hopes for “Base” is the special status of “Base” in the territory of Asimov’s work: Counting from the official creation in 1942, Asimov has almost devoted his energy for the next 50 years. Therefore, “Base” is the largest epic story structure of the science fiction godfather. In previous public interviews, Apple TV+ related people have regarded the “Base” series as a super product comparable to “Game of Thrones.”
But the magic of Asimov failed to save the decline of Apple TV+.
After 48 hours of airing, “Base” did not become a hit: on the Rotten Tomatoes website, the Rotten Tomatoes Index and Popcorn Index of “Base” were only 70% and 69%, respectively. On the domestic Douban website, the score of “Base” is only 7.1 points.
It is Cook’s strategy to drive the development of Apple TV+ through super IP “web dramas”. At the Apple Autumn New Product Launch Conference on September 14 this year (US time), “Apple TV+ Fall 2021 Film List” was listed by Apple as the opening product, and 4 other dramas were released at the same time as “Base” ——This is also Apple’s largest “drama” operation after the epidemic.
It is worth noting that the coldness of “Base” has not hindered Apple’s ambitions of streaming media content. Beginning in the summer of 2020, Apple TV+ has begun to buy the copyrights of old movies and dramas in large quantities, and in September this year, news showed that Apple TV+ will launch a new original content every week from 2022.
But can gamble on content really save Apple TV+?
Why Asimov?
Apple won the copyright of Asimov’s “Base” in 2019.
In November of this year, Apple officially launched Apple TV+. Apple did not come empty-handed on the original content. At the same time as the release of Apple TV+, Apple also released the first “original web drama”-“Seeing”.
There have been reports from authoritative American media that the production cost of a single episode of “Seeing” has been close to 15 million U.S. dollars, which means that “Seeing” is even close to the investment scale of “Game of Thrones”.
The success of old rival Netflix has provided a reference for Apple. It is reported that Netflix’s story of “House of Cards” growing more than 27 million paying users a year impressed Apple executives. And the “expensive” problem criticized by “House of Cards” seems to be irrelevant to Apple-the production cost of “House of Cards” in 2013 was as high as 100 million U.S. dollars, while the production cost of “Seeing” exceeded 150 million U.S. dollars.
But “Seeing” did not become “House of Cards” after all.
Hidden behind the “Draining Strategy” of “Seeing” is the hidden worries of Apple’s streaming media content production method: In order to complete “Seeing”, Apple not only paid 150 million US dollars in production costs, but also invited a series of circles. Inside “Celebrity”, one of the co-directors of “Seeing” is “The Hunger Games” director Lawrence, and the starring role is “Aquaman” actor Jason Momoa.
Some Hollywood people have complained about Apple’s “stupid people and a lot of money, chaotic teamwork” model. For example, one of the reasons why Apple chose Jason Momoa at the time was because of his high traffic popularity on the SNS platform after the release of “Aquaman”.
“This is a web drama that uses super traffic superstars, matching fantasy settings, and very expensive special effects. How would you evaluate it if it was placed in China?” A domestic film critic who did not want to be named bluntly said, “Seeing” is sufficient Reflecting today’s “unfamiliar” Apple is in the field of content creation, “this is obviously not the Apple when Jobs was at the helm of Pixar, and Jobs probably wouldn’t allow his team to make such a series.”
For Apple, “Seeing” has become an expensive tuition-“Seeing” did not bring Apple the same topicality and word-of-mouth as “House of Cards”, but made a large number of Hollywood “unemployed” smell ” Where the “rice bowl” is.
According to a person familiar with the U.S. film and television market, from 2019 to 2020, some producers and copyright holders began to try to communicate through friends and relevant Apple officials. One of the results was that some of them were regarded by Hollywood practitioners. The IP of “Hot Goods” was successfully “released”.
A practitioner who did not want to be named stated that Asimov’s “Base” is one of such great works: In Hollywood, “Base” is regarded as one of the most difficult super IPs to adapt. Because Asimov has created many stories around the basic setting of “Base”, “Base” constitutes a huge and extremely complex story universe. This not only means a long story line and massive film and television series, but also means a high investment in special effects.
Asimov is regarded as one of the greatest science fiction writers
In North American film and television magazines at that time, “The Base” was often described as a more ambitious narrative than “Game of Thrones”, and “Game of Thrones” author Fat Martin has repeatedly stated that he was deeply affected by Asimo when he was creating. Inspired by the husband’s “Base”.
For Apple executives who were envious of HBO MAX “Game of Thrones” at the time, such a huge and rare super IP that no one dared to take over was exactly what they wanted. After acquiring the right to adapt the “Base” series through investment in 2019, Apple quickly matched it with a huge team: a production team of more than 500 people is located in the Irish filming base all year round. Even in terms of the scale of the series, “The Base” is suspected of being the “Game of Thrones”. In an earlier interview, an Apple TV+ related person revealed that “The Base” has 10 episodes per season and may be filmed for 8~ 10 seasons.
Based on the current public data, the single-package “Base” is not less than 5 million US dollars. Once Apple finally shoots “Base” as a masterpiece of 8-10 seasons, 10 episodes per season, then at least “4~ 500 million US dollars”. It is worth noting that in the American drama production model, the actors’ pay will gradually rise, and even in the middle and late stages, the actors’ pay will increase exponentially. This means that Apple’s final investment in “The Base” may exceed 1 billion US dollars.
But can this model really allow Apple TV+ to rise rapidly?
How miserable is Apple TV+ mixing?
Although the monthly subscription fee for Apple TV+ is less than US$5, it is still not popular. According to research data from AC Nielsen, in the North American streaming market, Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ account for nearly 71.4% of the market, while Apple’s Apple TV+ accounted for less than 5% of the market.
It is worth noting that a market share of less than 5% may also be a “beach castle”. The North American market analysis agency MoffetNathan’s research shows that in 2021, nearly 60% of Apple TV+ users are “trial accounts”-based on Apple’s hardware sales strategy in North America, some iPhone and iPad devices will come with a one-year Apple TV+ trial opportunity .
The sluggish popularity of Apple TV+ directly affects the performance of hardware devices such as Apple TV. Research from Strategy Analytics shows that in the streaming media-related hardware equipment market, the market share of Apple products has been declining year by year. In 2015, Apple TV once occupied nearly 31% of the streaming media TV hardware market, but as of the beginning of 2021, this proportion has been lower than 3%.
Apple TV+ was originally launched to boost hardware sales. When Apple officially released the Apple TV+ project in November 2019, “matching Apple hardware with a one-year free trial right” has become the basic label of Apple TV+. In several public interviews with Cook at the time, he bluntly stated that the launch of Apple TV+ was to enrich the content choices of users and allow hardware products such as Apple TV to obtain more content support.
In fact, it is Apple’s “last resort” to use Apple TV+. A core logic behind the birth of Apple TV+ is: around 2019, some content parties have begun to adopt a defensive attitude towards Apple hardware.
Take Netflix as an example. At that time, Netflix launched a TV-based interactive content “Bandersnatch”, but it is worth noting that Apple TV was not included in the list of supported hardware, and Samsung and Sony’s devices were “unimpeded.” “. Earlier, some content parties that were deeply bound to streaming media channels were also worried about Apple’s relatively closed hardware ecology. Some music and video producers have publicly expressed concern that the “sharing policy” based on Apple’s hardware ecology is not good for creators. .
Apple executives have seen the problems caused by the “content party rejecting hardware”. Due to the high price of Apple’s hardware, “content shielding” has directly brought about a decline in sales. In the North American market from 2018 to 2019, Samsung, Sony and other brands launched Sales of some of the TV hardware products surged.
As a proactive response strategy, when Apple TV+ was launched, Apple executives tried to show greater sincerity to the content side: In the earliest Apple TV+ service, TV channels such as HBO and Starz were not only included in the ecology, but also served as “publicity points.” Promotion. Even Apple executives once allowed Apple TV+ to connect with Amazon Prime and Hulu.
In public interviews at the time, when Apple executives talked about Apple TV+, “original content” was not a high-frequency vocabulary. But this “open” attitude soon changed qualitatively.
But only 4 months after Apple TV+ went live, Cook made it clear at the 2020 Apple Annual Shareholders’ Meeting that “Apple TV+ streaming services will only provide original programs.” It was also the first time that Apple’s senior executives focused on this. In the direction of “focusing on the development of original content belonging to Apple”. At that time, the American media interpreted this information as a signal that Apple officially declared war on Netflix.
There are two internal and external factors that caused the change of Apple TV+ from open to closed. From the perspective of external factors, Apple, with an open attitude, has not obtained a truly sufficient amount of third-party content support. On some streaming media channels that cooperate with Apple TV+, some core dramas will be listed as “channel exclusive”, which means that users can only enjoy some “sub-optimal content” or “old content” through Apple TV+.
From the perspective of internal reasons, Apple executives are aware that the third-party content model is deeply harmful to Apple TV+-traffic will not settle on Apple TV+. When these users see high-quality content, they will further improve the brand awareness of content providers such as Hulu and HBO, and will not rely on Apple TV+.
A key figure is retention rate. According to MoffetNathan’s research, when the first year of free trial opportunities ends, less than 20% of users are willing to renew Apple TV+.
As a result, Apple resolutely evolved to the old rival Netflix’s model: through first-party exclusive original content, attract subscribers, and through continuous high-quality content, increase retention and repurchase.
But this is by no means an easy war, because the streaming media market has become more crowded from 2019 to 2020.
Just 10 days after Apple launched Apple TV+, Disney officially launched Disney+. In the spring of 2020, a few months later, Apple’s former friend HBO also turned into a new rival-HBO officially launched the streaming media business HBO MAX.
At that time, some analysts pointed out the core problem that Apple’s Apple TV+ is about to face: “Content will directly affect subscriptions. If Apple has enough great content, people may also subscribe.”
But it’s not difficult to see the challenges Apple faces by just taking a look at the opponent’s “Arsenal”: Taking HBO MAX as an example, after its official launch, HBO MAX not only has high-quality content such as “Friends” and “The Sopranos”, but also “Game of Thrones”-the top product on the market at the time.
As “Base” is getting colder, Apple needs to rethink its underlying logic of making original streaming media content.
US stock market analyst Liu Bin told Tiger Sniff that, compared to Disney and Netflix, what Apple needs to do is to change its content production model.
“Apple’s super web drama project, whether it is “Seeing” or “Base”, attaches great importance to the actor team, but ignores the screenwriter team-so the drama works on Apple TV+ often have the problem of being complained by the audience in North America. , And Netflix and HBO have different philosophies.”
According to Liu Bin, Netflix and HBO did not use “product thinking” to produce dramas. Netflix and HBO have fully absorbed Hollywood genes and evolved into a model that uses content creation as the fundamental gene to integrate Internet play; and Apple’s current content creation model is still relatively “product-oriented”, which is a model that emphasizes “book data”, “short-term input and output”, “single point settlement” and other links, and emphasizes the “productivity” among production team members. Checks and balances”. “For example, does the decentralization of directors really allow creators to give full play? Another example is whether there are more grounded marketing ideas. This year, Netflix and HBO’s new dramas have begun to focus on the East Asian market. It is biased towards the aesthetics of the East Asian market; on the marketing side, it will also use SNS and use short videos and live broadcasts to market. But these changes are not obvious in Apple’s new dramas.”
A more realistic question has been put before Cook: Will Asimov’s “Base” still be made into an 80-100 episode super giant? Or is it better to say that the more suitable way for Apple is to launch a limited edition iPhone of Asimov that is linked to “Base”?
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