Quick Takes: Apple Is Spending $1B On Content; Netflix Snares Shonda Rhimes; HBO and Vice Score With Charlottesville Doc

Apple announced today that it will spend up to a billion dollars to buy ten new shows. The company, which recently hired two industry heavyweights (Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg) from Sony Pictures Television to oversee their fledgling TV division, seems to (finally) be getting serious about TV. Given the massive size of their war chest (around one-quarter trillion dollars) many of us have been surprised that they haven’t just gone and bought a studio or network group. That may still be in the offing though, as Apple may just be testing the waters right now.

That said, there are still several unanswered questions about the announcement:

1. How does Apple plan to distribute all this new content? Through iTunes? Apple Music? A completely new service? They have not explained their thinking on this yet, which may mean it’s still very much an open question on their end too.
2. Is ten series enough to launch a new service? What else are they planning on buying? It’s a valid question, as there’s not much out there left to buy, at least not in terms of network reruns or even better quality short form.
3. Is it too late? Has Apple’s ship already sailed? Regardless of what Apple does, it’s doing to be tough to get consumers to sign up for yet another TV service on top of all the ones they already have—Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO. Showtime, CBS et al.

Once Apple answers the distribution question, it will be easier to assess what they are up to. One very smart move though: hiring Erlcht and Van Amburg. Too many tech companies make the mistake of not hiring anyone with real Hollywood experience, which is how you wind up with Scare PewDiePie. So points to Apple for being wise enough to see the value of industry veterans.

It’s easy to see Netflix’s poaching of Shonda Rhimes as a big middle finger to Disney for pulling its movies from Netflix, but odds are it’s been in the works for a while now and represents something much more.

Netflix is looking to expand their base beyond the upscale educated coastal types who flock to series like Orange Is The New Black and House of Cards. Their early strategy made sense: Much like television in the early days, Netflix’s initial audience was mostly educated and upscale, people for whom an extra $10/month was no big deal. But in order to expand beyond that limited demographic, Netflix needs more mass hits—they need to start competing with ABC, not HBO.

Rhimes gives them the means to do so. Her shows are well done, well liked and have mass appeal. They are the sorts of shows that can get a whole new demographic to see Netflix as a must-have. Netflix’s first attempt at mass appeal content, the Full House reboot Fuller House, scored massive ratings, but wasn’t the type of show that gets new viewers to subscribe. Rhimes’s buzzworthy shows on the other hand, are exactly the kind of programming that boosts subscriptions.

This doesn’t mean that Netflix needs to give up on that HBO demographic, either. Thanks to the sophisticated targeting capabilities of the Netflix platform, they can do both: continue to produce high quality series that appeal to a more niche audience while adding on series from Rhimes and others that appeal to a mass audience.

In other words, a win all around.

As the horror of Charlottesville and the ever-evolving aftermath continues to send shock waves over the internet, a twenty-minute documentary from HBO and Vice News Tonight has become the go-to news source for millions. Over 22 million on Facebook and 2 million on YouTube, that is.

The hard-hitting segment, which allows the marchers to tell their story in their own words to Vice correspondent Elle Reeve seems to have struck a chord with internet viewers, likely due to its pitch-perfect illustration of Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” theory.

What’s significant for the television industry though, is who is doing this: Vice, a digital publisher that has created a video that’s perfect for where the news is being discussed these days: on social media.

In days gone by, the show-everyone-was-talking-about would have come from one of the network news teams or maybe even CNN. If you’re looking for proof that broadcast network news is becoming increasingly irrelevant, particularly for younger viewers, the viral success of this video is a perfect illustration.

A secondary TV industry effect is that this will make many of those 20 million viewers aware that Vice has a daily news show on HBO. One of the problems HBO has faced with HBO Now, its online-only service, is that viewers didn’t see much reason to subscribe beyond bingeing on the series they were interested in, or in keeping the subscription once the current season of say, Westworld was over.

It remains to be seen whether the daily Vice News Tonight show is enough of a reason for viewers to keep their HBO Now subscriptions year round, but it’s most certainly a start, particularly if Vice can continue to own the conversation around national events.

“If you know anything about television, you probably know Alan Wolk.” That’s how Adweek describes the best-selling author of Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk currently serves as Lead Analyst for TV[R]EV.