This surprises me, I would have thought the viewership would have been much higher:
Despite its monumental spending, it has just 0.2% of TV viewership in the US, with fewer views in a month than Netflix gets in a mere 24 hours. It has also struggled to increase subscribers.
Looks like we are in for more ads. 
Certainly in the UK, virtually no-one talks about Apple TV, at least in my experience. Iām not sure why they bother.
Apple has some good content, but not enough for me to subscribe year round.
I really liked Ted Lasso and would subscribe to ATV+ as soon as each season was complete. But one month a year is more than enough time to watch everything that I find interesting.
The same for me. I subscribed to to get Foundation and Slow Horses; once I watched, I stopped.
I wonder sometimes if these companies (including app subscriptions) ever stop to think about the wider world in which they live. I imagine Apple TV is a supplementary entertainment channel. I think the biggest is Netflix, Disney and Amazon Prime. Then you have all the others: Paramount, Discovery, etc. Apple would rarely be first or even second choice for most households.
A household budget only goes so far.
Rather like the subscriptionsāfor āfor the price of a cappuccino.ā Ironically, if I subscribe to too many of these, I can no longer afford a real coffee!
I have less incentive to subscribe to a streaming service than most. Iāve been watching movies since the late 1950ās so Iāve seen how Hollywood recycles the same plots over and over. Sometimes itās a remake like āA Star is Bornā, Iāve seen three of these. Sometime they āborrowā a story and dress it up differently. 1954ās āSeven Samuraiā became 1960ās āThe Magnificent Sevenā, and then became 1980ās āBattle Beyond the Starsā . . . with Robert Vaughn playing the same character he did in the āMagnificent Sevenā.
With few exceptions I have little interest in a streaming serviceās back catalog. Iāve either seen better versions of a movie or can frequently recognize a plot early and guess how the story will end. The last time I can remember being surprised by a movie was in 1997. The end of āThe Gameā, staring Michael Douglas, caught me totally by surprise.
I mainly watch broadcast TV, when new content is available. Or YouTube and old TV shows that I missed the first time they came around.
Doesnāt surprise me at all. AppleTV has a small catalog, yet its subscription is almost the same as its competitors, that have a much bigger catalog.
Apple shows tend to have shorter seasons which makes them easy to view, just subscribe for a month or two and youāll see most of them.
What sets them apart is the 4K quality, high quality sets and A-list actors. But with so much great content these days, people arenāt going to pay yet another subscription.
Seems to me that Apple needs a lot more content to successfully keep selling independent subscriptions. So at some point theyāll either have to:
For me there are two problems with Apple TV. Firstly the obvious one of not enough original content and what there is is pretty much Anglo-USian. I want other language programming; would be good to have original signed content, which for me would be British Sign Language, and then other spoken languages after all Apple is a global company. For comparison Netflix has hundreds of K-dramas ā my CoVid lockdown obsession ā but I canāt find any on Apple TV (if there is some then please direct me to it) although to be fair Amazon Prime is woefull in that regard too.
Secondly falling out from the other spoken languages comment is that too much of the ācontentā is simply a redirect to a different streaming application. Click on something in Apple TV and it takes one off to Discovery or one of the UK broadcasters.
Please god no ads. Please please no ads. Written in other threads here of my absolute hatred of advertising. It could be Apple TVās USP āwe donāt have any ads to force on youā.
Apple has a lot of company in their 25 million subscriber order of magnitude. Itās just hard to compete with Netflix and Youtube. They reportedly are outperforming Paramount Plus, which has a huge backlog, so their focus on spending prestige shows and movies has worked, but only to grow them into that awkward size where theyāre expensive to run but havenāt hit the (est. 200 million) subscribers required to be profitable indefinitelyācurrently only attained by Netflix, Disney and Amazon and a fourth will probably require another merger. Apple, of course, has the least financial pressure to hit 200M or merge, and strategically little pressure as long as they keep looking more like HBO than HBO, which is completely brand-congruent.
Iām also not sure the article is reporting something that is materially affecting shows, either. Eddie Cue may just want to make sure Apple is tracking with the industry-wide contraction and taking advantage of more supply in production and talent.
Ad tiers are sadly inevitable. Ad tiers do put pressure on per-show budgets but not the total content budget as supply of shows/views is important, and ad tiers broaden the user base this require more variety in style/genre/language.
Yes, same here! It will take time. Netflix has only recently become good at buying content in so many geographic regions and marketing it to the right users.
What is Appleās measure of success though? If it is subscription, then I think they can lower the price especially for iCloud Storage subscribers and Iād jump on the ship (there is that Apple One but it bundles other services that I have zero interest on: Arcade and Fitness+).
But if they measure it on viewership count, then it is the lack of content they have to deal with, which I am guessing, some partnership with other provider might beef up their catalog and send people to watch them.
Also, donāt forget that people tend to associate Apple TV+ with Apple iPhones, devices and 80% of the world population does not use iPhones. The statement is on US viewership, though, and Apple is popular there.
Iām happy to subscribe to Apple TV. Iām firmly in the no ads camp too. Happy to pay the subscription while it remains ad free. Iām not interested in any ad supported subscription tier. My tastes are quite limited in television shows and films so I often go for long periods without consuming any Apple TV content but I remain happy to keep it as it is bundled with my Apple One subscription.
I donāt watch any free to air TV because of ads. I donāt listen to any ad supported radio networks.
I donāt like advertisements either, but I grew up with three broadcast channels, ABC, CBS, and NBC, and depending on where I lived, the occasional UHF local channel. So I wasnāt able to regularily skip commercials until I purchased a TiVo around 2002.
Today I get my over the air and ācableā channels from YouTubeTV, and if I add a program or series to my Library before it airs Iām able to fast forward through commercials.
And itās been nice being able to pay other streaming services for ad free entertainment but that may be coming to an end.
āAds are getting increasingly hard to avoid on streaming services. One by one, Netflix, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+ and Max have added 30- and 60-second commercials in exchange for a slightly lower subscription price. Amazon has turned ads on by default. And the live sports on those services include built-in commercial breaks no matter what price you payā
Which is why I record the games. I can then FF past the commercials. 
I subscribe to Apple TV as a part of the iCloud Storage, Apple Music, Apple TV bundle. We also subscribe to MLS soccer. Iām unsure I would subscribe if I didnāt want the other three elements.
My wife and I find a lot of the programming āmeh.ā We hear a podcaster or someone talk in glowing terms about an Apple series, watch the first episode, and then never watch another. Itās just not our kind of entertainment.
Most of what we use Apple TV for is streaming movies and series weāve purchased from Apple, but we could do the same thing with the Apple TV app on our Samsung TV or AirPlay it from our iPad.
Iām in the same boat as well. We use the fitness, music, storage, and some TV. Not much with arcade but since bundled, itās most cost effective that way. As far as other subs, donāt have many continuously. Sign on and off based on content and time of year. Same with podcasts. I donāt pay a premium for any of them because I will switch around to different ones when I get tired of hearing the same voices week in and week out.
Iāve stopped watching sport for the same reason. Iām a big fan of test match cricket but canāt watch it on TV due to an ad break at the end of every over. Here in Australia I consume test match cricket on ABC radio which does not run ads.
It is getting harder to avoid it.
āApple has held talks with the UKās TV ratings body in the latest sign that the tech giant is planning to introduce adverts on its streaming service.ā
