Has Apple delayed its big TV+ push into summer?

Apple’s Ted Lasso series is fantastic, by the way. I binge-watched it in a night.

It sure looks like Apple has once again found cause to delay its next big push on TV into June, given that it has now extended its free subscription offer for TV+ into summer, even while it seems to be working furiously to develop fresh content.

Here’s what’s happening

Three interesting things have emerged in recent days:

1. To reprise the above, Variety spotted Apple’s decision to extend its free TV+ subscription into July 2021 for people who signed up for a 12-month trial in Nov 2019.
2. Apple has just given the top film marketing job to former Warner Bros Pics exec, JP Richards. This may seem like just more desk shuffling on first glance, but let’s face it, you don’t give someone a job as “Head of Film Marketing Strategy’ unless you have something you want to talk about. In this case, A lot of it. (Variety has a pretty extensive list of some of these.)
3. And Apple has now generated a hit. It wasn’t the show anyone expected. It was Ted Lasso, which has (I think, quite rightly) been nominated for three Critics Choice Awards and has now been renewed for two more seasons.

Apple is expanding beyond its creative industry base

What this suggests

Now, content creation takes time and we know already that COVID-19 has really, really hurt that process. Filming has stopped across the industry, and while it continues it’s risky and things get shut down regularly. It makes it hard to predict when shows complete.

However, Apple has continued with its other work – in this case ensuring its TV+ service can be made available on almost any device and almost any platform. This means it now has a channel that’s as available as any other network. And being a network feels far more what Apple’s big picture is in this than being a ‘service’.

Get the picture?

But, to be a network takes content – and it really, really looks as if Apple is on the fast road to flooding us with contentcome summer. The only matter arising (at least for me) on which being: does Apple have anything else planned for about June/July? If so, what, and how will this align across the rest of the company’s content and hardware ploy?

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