Evans: Apple and Google suffered a complete strategic failure in TV
Benedict Evans · TV after software · Sep 5, 2022 · at 11:32
Benedict Evans discusses media strategy and why tech platforms were unable to unbundle and aggregate the television industry into a single user interface as they did with music.
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“This is another piece of the story is Apple and Google sort of complete strategic failure in TV. What Apple and Google wanted to do and what Apple wanted to do with the Apple TV and indeed with the Apple TV app they have now. And remember the Apple TV originally was announced like six months before the iPhone and it was called the ITV and then to rewrite the Apple TV because ITV actually exists in the UK. And yeah, like, no, you can't do that. And so, but the thing is, what they wanted to do is they wanted to do an iTunes to it, or Google wanted to do a YouTube to it. They wanted all the shows to be in one UI, all atomized, all in this completely flat structure, and you could go and search for a show in the way that you search for an album, and everything would be in one library, and you'd pay one subscription, and maybe, you know, you get differential pricing, you'd have to buy a bundle for this or something, but basically it would all be, Apple would own the UX.”
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