Apple Exec Jimmy Iovine Confirms Company's Interest in Making 'Pop Culture' TV Shows (hollywoodreporter.com) 86
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."
I forsee a simple pricing model (Score:2)
$250 for the show.
Then for an additional $60, you can buy the audio track.
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But surely you need a special $50 adapter to decrypt that $60 audio track. And since this comes from a courageous company, you need to pay the same for the other side of audio channel - surely nobody expects to get full stereo sound without a small extra fee.
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and all the actors are very thin.
Apple has jumped the shark (Score:1)
Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave
Re:Apple has jumped the shark (Score:5, Funny)
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 ...
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As many as he wants. That's just the way he rolls.
How about making a show about a high-tech company in decline jumping the shark? After all, we can skip the happy days and cut right to the present.
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"How many times must he roll per second to power the whole campus?"
Sixty times, of course.
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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 targ
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You might want to stick with classically racist content producers, like Amazon & Netflix.
Huh... So that's why Amazon decided to turn Man in the High Castle into a TV show... It all makes sense now.
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"You might want to stick with classically racist content producers, like Amazon & Netflix."
???
Even for an AC, this is a weird one.
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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).
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Steve Jobs must be rolling over in his grave
Considering what a legendary evil prick he was, I imagine he's way too busy giving rimjobs to Genghis Kahn in the lowest pit of Hell to care.
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Considering what a legendary evil prick he was,
Evil? That's a bit strong. Legendary Asshole, on the other hand, is probably accurate. Get these damned scribble-pads out of my office! etc.
Splitting Apple (Score:1)
And maybe they'll consider splitting the boring and uninteresting computing division as a separate little company: Apple Computer - that can resume making and improving the last Unix[TM] Workstations available.
I bet! (Score:1)
"We're going to do whatever hits popular culture smack on the nose. We're going to try."
translation
"We're desperate enough to try anything at this point except add headphone jacks and escape escape keys."
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Wow! You can save Apple with headphone jacks and escape keys? Have you told Apple this? Maybe you could apply to be CEO, with insight like that I'm sure they'd listen to you.
Can only be played on Apple products (Score:1)
I am sure this is yet another way to enforce vendor lock in. Want to watch this new pop-culture phenomenon? Here's a $300 dongle for your TV...
Even if they do decide to play nice with Netflix or some other service, there is no way they will pass up the opportunity to brand the hell out of it so, at least, you will be able to easily identify it (and skip it).
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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.
Apple software, not Apple Products Only (Score:3)
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.
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iTunes video is defective due to DRM. Doesn't work on devices that don't support Apple DRM, i.e. most of them.
Whoosh (Score:2)
unes video is defective due to DRM. Doesn't work on devices that don't support Apple DRM
Which includes Windows, is Windows an Apple product or not?
How many laptops can run Windows again? What's that, most of them?
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I don't watch TV on my laptop, I prefer my TV. I'm not paying out for an Apple TV and setting up associated services to stream to it.
Maybe they could do a cheap dongle. They do love dongles. I really don't see much point paying to access a marketplace.
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--
My Audio Blog [electronic...records.de]
Now We Know (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good idea (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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No way would I ever unsubscribe from Netflix now.
I would. Netflix's original remit was to provide current popular and existing shows as an alternative to driving down to Video2000. Unfortunately their library is utter shit.
That said I'm not sure if you're being facetious or actually don't like content produced by other networks / studios.
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Netflix's original remit was to provide current popular and existing shows
They still do that. Not to the same extent as they used to, but that's on content providers. There is enough good rating content I've stayed happy with the service in that regard.
In the meantime Netflix is building up a base of what will become a better base of content over time. A new subscriber at this point would have a lot of really good shows to go through - house of cards, that Orange show (first season anyway), Stranger Thin
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They still do that.
Your statement is highly locale dependent. Their catalogue currently ranges from bearable to garbage depending on where you live. We only covered that recently [slashdot.org]
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The only issue is, can Apple produce anything anyone wants to watch? That's the real trick.
It was telling he mentioned South Park. South Park was edgy counter culture 20 years ago. "Oh my God I can't believe they said that it's so irreverent lolololol!" But today they're doing the exact same "lol Trump is orange and doesn't really want to be president and is stupid ha ha ha" joke you find on every single late night comedy show. They were a counter culture and they became the culture.
The new counter culture is right wing, not lefty/libertarian. If they wanted something edgy and new that would get
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I would love to see that same kind of content, and agree that is the new counter-culture - also agree it is very unlikely the Apple of today would fund such content.
That's why I'm not really sure what success Apple will find, unless they hit on some interesting shows in spite of themselves.
Oh well, more room for Netflix to prosper I guess!
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Failing upwards (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Tim Cook was really drunk one night, thought he was renewing Jony Ive's contract, and got Jim Iovine by mistake.
Sell sell sell (Score:4, Funny)
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...
Ethics (Score:2)
Pop culture? Seriously? Apparently we are willing to pay more and more for moral degradation and the promotion of selfishness. Have we no shame? Anyway, I'm glad there's someone out there making money off it. What a great contribution to the world and all of humanity you have made, Mr. Iovine. If not to the world, at least yourself. That oughta be worth something.
The thinking people of the world have failed.
No (Score:1)
Beats... (Score:2)
The acquisition that keeps killing Apple.
Not that Tim Cook hasn't done a good job of trying.
More Courage (Score:2)
I can see them now (Score:2)
please dont (Score:1)
Here's a show idea: My New Mac Pro Tower (Score:2)
And its spin off: My New 17 Inch Laptop.