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This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers, a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week.
Severance. Pachinko. Silo. Ted Lasso. Over the past couple of years, a number of Apple TV shows have become hits with audiences and critics alike. And yet, compared to the size of other subscription services, Apple TV still barely makes a dent.
In Nielsen’s most recent The Gauge report, Apple’s service failed once again to make the top 10 list of most-used streaming services, suggesting that its audience is smaller than not just that of Netflix and Disney Plus, but also Tubi, HBO Max, and The Roku Channel.
New data released by subscription insights startup Antenna last week suggests that this may not be a contradiction at all: Engagement with Apple’s video services is heavily driven by a few anchor shows, according to Antenna’s new State of Subscriptions report, whereas Netflix viewing is spread out much more across a wider range of titles.
The report estimates that 32 percent of what the company classifies as heavy viewers watched the Apple TV show Shrinking in March of this year, while 31 percent watched the action series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. On Netflix, only War Machine was watched by 25 percent of heavy viewers, while all other titles remained below the 20-percent mark.
“Big scripted hits anchor heavy viewership on Apple TV,” the report notes. “Netflix Heavy Viewers spread across the slate, signaling breadth of engagement rather than concentration.”
A few tentpole titles that get people hooked and become cultural moments: That’s a model premium cable networks like FX, HBO, and Showtime relied on for decades. It’s also something a number of video subscription services briefly tried to replicate in the streaming age as they aimed to compete with Netflix.
When HBO Max first launched in 2020, it was all about extending the HBO brand and curation approach into streaming. Then, WarnerMedia merged with Discovery, which brought a bunch of reality TV shows to the service, muddying the value proposition. The service was even briefly rebanded as Max to attract a broader audience, but Warner Bros. Discovery reneged on that change last year.
Likewise, Disney tried to give its streaming operations more of a premium TV network feel when it launched the FX on Hulu brand with great fanfare in early 2020. Cashing in on the success of the cable network, FX on Hulu was supposed to not just host shows that had previously aired on cable, but also FX-branded Hulu originals. However, it turned out that establishing a premium brand within a service that had a little bit of everything was easier said than done. The company has since phased out the “FX on Hulu” branding and simply uses FX as a content category alongside others, like ABC, Hotstar, and Freeform.
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