Apple TV+ Is Can’t-Miss Marketing For Everything Else At Apple

Apple’s PR Team 1, Everyone Else 0.

Over the last several months, tech and entertainment reporters had convinced themselves and each other that Apple would price its star-studded streaming service Apple TV+ at an omigod-nobody-will-ever-pay-that $9.99 a month. Variety and Bloomberg were still expecting $9.99 a month on the eve of Apple’s announcement.

And, as it turns out, the new Apple TV+ streamer will be free for the first year to consumers who purchase a new iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, iPod touch or Mac and $4.99 a month for the otherwise curious. At its Tuesday keynote, Apple announced that the streamer will launch November 1 on Apple devices and newer Samsung TVs and follow soon after for Mac, Amazon Fire TV, LG, Roku, Sony and Vizio TV platforms.

Whether Apple blinked on $9.99 a month or played the expectations game to its advantage, the news stunned Wall Street. Netflix, Disney and Roku’s share prices moved immediately lower on the expectation that Apple is going to be a bigger player in the TV future than many observers previously thought.

This does not, though, mark a new direction for Apple. I predicted in June that Apple TV+ would either (1) be bundled with Apple Music and Apple News+ or (2) be offered as an inexpensive — or free — noisemaker to bring consumers to Apple’s TV app to subscribe to premium services like HBO and Showtime.

Apple chose Option No. 2 but went much, much further by making Apple TV+ free for the first year for consumers who buy new Apple hardware products. Apple sells 50 million iPhones every quarter. LightShed Partners media analyst Rich Greenfield estimated that 250 million consumers worldwide would be able to watch Apple’s The Morning Show starring Jennifer Aniston for free over the next year.

When you’re the biggest company in the world with a market value of nearly $1 trillion, you can afford to spend $6 billion to test the TV waters and do it with the biggest creators and stars in the business. Apple is making a shrewd bet on Apple TV+ as a glossy, must-watch marketing vehicle for everything else in the Apple ecosystem.

Aniston is, in a manner of speaking, Apple’s new chief marketing officer. She’s on the cover of Entertainment Weekly, which Apple CEO Tim Cook quoted during the keynote as calling The Morning Show “fall’s most anticipated series.” Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carrell are co-stars. You will watch The Morning Show, and there’s a decent chance you’ll watch it for free.

There’s no understating just how massive a change the TV business is about to undergo:

• On October 29, AT&T is scheduled to unveil the HBO Max streamer at an investor-day event on the Warner Bros. lot in Hollywood with a beta launch soon after.
• On November 1, Apple TV+ will launch with four big shows — dramedy The Morning Show, fantasy series See starring Jason Momoa, dark comedy Dickinson starring Hailee Steinfeld, and sci-fi epic For All Mankind starring Joel Kinneman — and more shows premiering monthly.
• On November 12, Disney+ will launch with a gigantic catalog and ambitious slate of new shows from the Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and National Geographic brands.
• In the spring, NBCUniversal is expected to launch its own streamer with titles from its NBC, Bravo, Syfy and other nameplates plus catalog shows and originals.

Apple and Amazon have a huge advantage over Disney, Netflix, AT&T and everyone else clawing to keep up. Apple and Amazon are much bigger companies than their media competitors, and Apple TV+ and Amazon’s Prime Video are value-ads — loss-leaders, sweeteners — to get you into their ecosystems and under their halos. Disney comes close with theme parks and the best film/TV brands in the business.

Can AT&T and Netflix compete with that? Can anyone?

Scott Porch writes about the TV business for Decider and is a contributing writer for The Daily Beast. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.