The streaming wars are heating up, but Apple’s first shots don’t hit

Apple can afford to dip its toe into streaming. The company has nearly $250 billion in cash, a mere billion of which it has been earmarked for this project. Like Amazon, another extremely lucrative tech company that has patiently bankrolled a streaming service, Apple can afford to throw money at the problem almost indefinitely. Whereas linear channels that have to make a profit have been going gray competing against Netflix, which doesn’t have to make money so long as its subscriber growth convinces shareholder it eventually could, they can now tear all their hair out competing against another company with Scrooge McDuck–style reserves.

The Morning Show, which cost Apple $300 million, is not good, but it’s bad in an extremely satisfying (to me) way. Like The Newsroom and Smash before it, it is an earnest, mediocre, insider-y look at an insular entertainment world of extreme interest to New York media types and thus perfectly positioned to get —fingers crossed!—a lot of overexposure in my Twitter feed. But if a hate-watch falls on a brand new streaming service, will it make a sound?

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