‘Separation‘was the series most nominated for the 2025 Emmys: 27 nominations, more than any other Netflix, HBO or Amazon title. The platform that hosts it exclusively, Apple TV, does not appear in the top 10 most viewed services according to Nielsen, but at the same time its constant launches of very high quality mean that it is increasingly talked about as the successor to HBO in terms of prestige and image.
The figures. Apple TV accumulates some 45 million subscribers worldwidejust a fraction of those that have services like Netflix, with 301 million. In share of television viewing time in the United States, Nielsen data places Apple TV below 1% monthlycompared to 8.2% for Netflix. Apple service doesn’t even appear among the ten most used. And yet, at the 2025 Emmys, Apple TV garnered 79 nominations, with ‘Separation’ leading series and ‘The Studio’ breaking the historical record most nominated comedy first season. Apple walked away from the ceremony with seven awards, only two behind HBO Max.
The HBO precedent. HBO built its reputation in the days of cable television on a very simple premise: fewer titles, more budget invested in each title, and creators with real control over their projects. The motto “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”was more than a marketing slogan. It also explained why ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘The Wire’ could only exist on that channel, and not on NBC. There were few real successes, but when there were, they became major cultural events.
When HBO stopped being HBO. WarnerMedia merged with Discovery in 2022, and its stated objective was to exit the quality adult television niche and compete in volume with Netflix. The service was renamed Max to signal the expansion into general entertainment content and realities from Discovery. The brand was dilutedand was considered a failure to the point that the company rolled back part of the change. HBO on streaming and not only in cable, it is a key example of how a brand can lose its original spirit due to an ambition that is not very well focused.
See less much more. A study by the consulting firm Antenna illustrates the concentration of viewing on Apple TVkey to the image projected by the platform: 32% of the service’s most active users watched ‘Unfiltered Therapy’ in March 2023, and 31% watched ‘Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters’. On Netflix, however, no title reached 25%. The lack of Apple TV’s catalog is always talked about as one of its big problems, but the truth is that when it comes to talking about Netflix figures in macro terms, that viewing is dispersed among hundreds of options.
How many titles are there? Apple TV has around 300 titles available, compared to more than 3,300 on Netflix. Precisely for this reason, larger investments can be allowed: the second season of ‘Separation’ cost 20 million dollars per episode, with a total of 200 million for the ten episodes, which makes it a very expensive series compared to most of its competitors. It is a budget that allows for top-notch actors, a very sophisticated technical finish and, of course, that invaluable variable that is time.
The result in terms of critical recognition is consistent: a analysis of average scores IMDb by platform showed that Apple TV had an average of 7.08, above Disney+ (6.71), Netflix (6.62) and Prime Video (6.62). It is the second consecutive year that the platform tops the ranking.
The basic difference. AppleTV loses around 1 billion dollars annual. For Apple, that figure is practically irrelevant: in the fiscal year ended in September 2024, the company generated 93.7 billion net profit and 391,000 million in total income. The Services segment (i.e. Apple TV, but also the App Store, iCloud and Apple Music) recorded 26.3 billion in revenue in the closing quarter of 2024, a quarterly record with growth of 14%. Furthermore, times change: Apple also works as an aggregator and gateway to Hulu or HBO Max (in a similar way to how Prime Video does), something structurally impossible for HBO and which undoubtedly provides it with considerable benefits.
Finally, another difference: Apple TV is the only streaming service streaming massive that does not have advertising rate. All subscribers pay the same monthly fee and view content without ads. This positioning reinforces the perception of a premium service because there is no “cheap option” and focuses attention on the quality of the titles, not on more practical issues. And as long as Apple TV does not decide to change its philosophy, as HBO did, it is getting closer to occupying the throne of queen of prestige television.
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