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This makes no sense whatsoever. Sorry. What upside is there for Apple in owning the expensive, unwieldy, production-side apparatus of Hollywood? Why should App

This makes no sense whatsoever. Sorry. What upside is there for Apple in owning the expensive, unwieldy, production-side apparatus of Hollywood? Why should Apple be devoting resources, human and economic, to developing content when its hardware and software businesses are so much more profitable? All this talk in recent weeks about "destroying Hollywood," and now, "buying Hollywood," focuses too much on Hollywood as it currently exists. If we're so confident that Hollywood-of-today is a ripe for disruption, then let's focus on disrupting it. The way to do that isn't to fight Hollywood on its own terms. It's to make the creation, distribution, and marketing of non-Hollywood films and shows easier for those outside of Hollywood to do. You don't kill Hollywood with a management change. You kill Hollywood by building -- or, really, supporting the growth of -- an alternative to Hollywood. Apple already has the means to do this. Its software makes filmmaking and editing cheap, easy, clean, and powerful. And, at least in theory, there's nothing stopping Apple from placing independent films right alongside mainstream Hollywood films on the iTunes movie page. Or serving them up through Genius-powered collaborative filtering algorithms. Etc. Apple already owns the future of Hollywood in a very meaningful way. To suggest that Apple needs to "buy" anymore of Hollywood is to miss the forest for the trees.

aptwebapps 15y ago
Well, that's what you might guess from the title and from the first half of the article where he posits that Apple _could_ buy Hollywood if it wanted to. But then he goes on to say that what they _should_ do is to buy a bunch of distribution rights so that they can offer true a la carte TV programming.
- jonnathanson 15y ago
  Where strategic acquisition of distribution would make some sense is as a competitive advantage over Amazon and Netflix (and over any similar competitors who might emerge). But to secure exclusive rights on key pieces of content, Apple would need to pay an exhorbitant amount of cash -- essentially, protection money to Hollywood to keep content out of competitive hands. This also forces Apple into the game of picking hits, by betting on which pieces of content are going to be worth buying exclusive rights for. Hit-picking is a notoriously tricky business. (Even Hollywood gets it right only about 10% of the time). Strategic, overall partnerships with key content providers -- HBO, for instance -- might make a great deal of sense. But to do so would be to place Apple's fate in the hands of HBO's development arm, i.e., to bet that HBO will keep turning out hits at the rate it currently is. Perhaps a hybrid approach here is best: prime the pump with some exclusive, big-studio content, but over time, focus on developing a content ecosystem that is attractive to content developers the way the App Store is to software developers. Hollywood is a very pricey middle-man for content development; the long-term goal should be to build up the independent development system. If nothing else, this forces Hollywood's costs down by introducing legitimate competition.
larrydag 15y ago
Agreed. The article should be title "The quickest way for Apple to lose $100 billion in cash". Also, didn't they do this already. See #pixar. Hollywood is all about content and the sooner they realize it the better they will be.

aptwebapps 15y ago

Well, that's what you might guess from the title and from the first half of the article where he posits that Apple _could_ buy Hollywood if it wanted to. But then he goes on to say that what they _should_ do is to buy a bunch of distribution rights so that they can offer true a la carte TV programming.

jonnathanson 15y ago
Where strategic acquisition of distribution would make some sense is as a competitive advantage over Amazon and Netflix (and over any similar competitors who might emerge). But to secure exclusive rights on key pieces of content, Apple would need to pay an exhorbitant amount of cash -- essentially, protection money to Hollywood to keep content out of competitive hands. This also forces Apple into the game of picking hits, by betting on which pieces of content are going to be worth buying exclusive rights for. Hit-picking is a notoriously tricky business. (Even Hollywood gets it right only about 10% of the time). Strategic, overall partnerships with key content providers -- HBO, for instance -- might make a great deal of sense. But to do so would be to place Apple's fate in the hands of HBO's development arm, i.e., to bet that HBO will keep turning out hits at the rate it currently is. Perhaps a hybrid approach here is best: prime the pump with some exclusive, big-studio content, but over time, focus on developing a content ecosystem that is attractive to content developers the way the App Store is to software developers. Hollywood is a very pricey middle-man for content development; the long-term goal should be to build up the independent development system. If nothing else, this forces Hollywood's costs down by introducing legitimate competition.

larrydag 15y ago

Agreed. The article should be title "The quickest way for Apple to lose $100 billion in cash". Also, didn't they do this already. See #pixar. Hollywood is all about content and the sooner they realize it the better they will be.