Apple's Video Plan May Focus on a Few High-Quality Programs, TDG Analyst Says

Apple, with its deep pockets, has the opportunity "to do something new and unique" in premium TV with its reported plans to spend $1 billion on original video content next year, The Diffusion Group's (TDG) Joel Espelien blogged Wednesday. TDG said licensing content would give it zero differentiation from existing MVPDs, but its own content would give Apple "something interesting on which to spend its already-committed marketing dollars, without benefiting other content owners." Pointing to the BBC putting out a small number of Sherlock episodes yearly, TDG said Apple likely will follow a similar model of a small number of high-quality shows that generate buzz on release and have a decent tail of shelf life. Rather than movies or sports programming, Apple might find more fertile programming ground in science-related reality programming, TDG said.