Apple Exec Jimmy Iovine Confirms Company's Interest in Making 'Pop Culture' TV Shows (hollywoodreporter.com)

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is working to bring in veteran producers to help create original content, including TV series and movies. Apple Music head Jimmy Iovine has all but confirmed the report and company's intentions to expand. From a report: "We're going to do whatever hits popular cultural smack on the nose," Iovine said when asked about Apple's reported expansion. Days after The Wall Street Journal's report that Apple plans to expand into original TV series and movies, Apple executive Jimmy Iovine hinted at what that might look like. "At Apple Music, what we're trying to create is an entire cultural, pop cultural experience, and that happens to include audio and video," he told reporters at the Television Critics Association's winter press tour. "If South Park walks into my office, I am not going to say you're not musicians, you know?" Iovine continued when pressed about the report. "We're going to do whatever hits popular culture smack on the nose. We're going to try."

Comments

I forsee a simple pricing model

[Cyberpunk Reality]

$250 for the show.

Then for an additional $60, you can buy the audio track.

Re:Apple has jumped the shark

[psergiu]

Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave

Maybe that's the whole idea. Those solar panels on the roof of Campus2 are not enough to power everything. But if they glue some rare earth magnets to a certain coffin and insert the resulting cylinder in an enclosure surrounded with a lot of coils ...

Now We Know

[notsteve]

Well, now we know what happened to the MacBook's development resources.

It's a good idea

[SuperKendall]

We've already seen from Netflix that producing enough original content is a huge draw to making sure people use your service. No way would I ever unsubscribe from Netflix now.

Similarly, a good enough base of original content would be a pretty good reason to buy an AppleTV. Amazon is trying the same approach themselves with Amazon content, which has no AppleTV app yet.

The only issue is, can Apple produce anything anyone wants to watch? That's the real trick. To my mind Amazon has not yet been nearly as successful at that as Netflix has. But maybe Apple can do better with a greater knowledge of what people stream than Amazon has.

Re:Can only be played on Apple products

[hey!]

Everyone wants to own both the distribution channel and the content being sold over that channel. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu...

They all want their own programming so that going to a different store means losing access to content. If Apple's content does appear on Netflix, you can be sure of two things: (1) it'll be old episodes and (2) their programs will include melodramatic, never-ending story arcs.

Failing upwards

[PopeRatzo]

Jimmy Iovine was one of the most powerful record executives during the period when record labels were all sleeping on the digital revolution that was about to overtake them.

Why would anyone, especially Apple, give a job to someone who was so clueless about technology and popular culture?

Re:Failing upwards

[Motherfucking Shit]

Tim Cook was really drunk one night, thought he was renewing Jony Ive's contract, and got Jim Iovine by mistake.

Sell sell sell

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Cook: Hey, I've got a great idea: let's give up our overwhelming and unique advantage in selling premium phone and computer hardware and become one of the dozens of interchangable players making visual content.
Ghost of Jobs: Fuck you Cook! Are you trying to piss on my legacy?
Cook: Did someone else feel a breeze? Anyway, whadya think?
Exec 2: Well...
Cook: You're fired. Anyone else?
Ghost of Jobs: Resign you hack! We're a hardware company! That's why I picked you, Mr. Hardware, to run it!
Cook: Someone get this heating system fixed on Monday. OK, now where were we.
Exec 3: TV shows.
Cook: Yes, we're gonna do sitcoms, and reality shows, and soap operas...

Apple software, not Apple Products Only

[SuperKendall]

Want to watch this new pop-culture phenomenon? Here's a $300 dongle for your TV...

Apple doesn't care where you watch it from, but it has to use iTunes (which you may have forgot they have for Windows as well).

It's just that yes, it happens to be easier to watch all this stuff on an Apple TV.

Re:Will it be "Social Justice" content?

[ArmoredDragon]

I think the point is that when television networks say they want to create shows for diverse audiences, they make shows that are almost exclusively one particular minority group, and they dedicate an entire time block to it rather than just one or two shows. UPN, WB, and Fox all did exactly this, and in most cases it was just black programming. I suspect the reason for this is that Latinos already have multiple channels filmed entirely in Spanish (telemundo, univision, etc) so there was little point in targeting them, and Asians are such a small group that they didn't think it would make enough.

Re:Will it be "Social Justice" content?

[ATMAvatar]

We've seen long-established characters changed to a different race or gender or sexual preference or some other trait just to make the content more "inclusive", even if it makes no sense within story lines or established canon. Or we've seen new characters created with a trait like their gender, race, or sexual preference as their main defining characteristic, solely so focus can be put on it, and the rest of the character pretty much ignored.

To be fair, there's also still a non-trivial amount of white-washing going on, too. The most recent and accessible example for the Slashdot audience would be casting Scarlett Johansson for the Ghost In The Shell movie.

In fact, I am somewhat curious about this list of movies that fit your criteria, as I can easily rattle off several whitewashing examples from recent movies off the top of my head, but I cannot think of that many where the reverse would be true (though there are some).