Apple just entered an exclusive partnership with Richard Plepler, one of the chief architects of HBOs last two decades of success. According to the New York Times, Pleplers new production company has a five-year exclusivity deal with Apples TV+. If Apples entertainment executives arent worried about what the incoming titans arrival means for their jobs and the platforms future yet, they probably should be. At least from where Im sitting.

For some context, here, Plepler departed his role as chief executive of HBO last year following AT&Ts acquisition of Time Warner. At the time, it was reported that Plepler found the merger minimized his autonomy, as AT&T bosses stepped in and immediately started tinkering with HBOs highly successful entertainment model. Reports last year detailed a new regime under which the business model would be closer to Netflixs than HBOsnamely, churning out more content instead of necessarily good content.

Plepler left after nearly three decades at HBO. But AT&Ts loss was evidently quickly interpreted to be a potential gain for Apple TV+. In many respects TV+ competes more directly with HBO than it does other streaming competitors. Apples own executives have described TV+ as a sort of antithesis to Netflix.

According to a New York Times interview with Plepler about the move, Apples Eddy Cue reached out to the former HBO head soon after he left HBO last February. Those talks landed Plepler at the company with a five-year producing role for series, documentaries, and films produced for Apple TV+. Cue, who oversees Apples services business, including TV+, previously brought on Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlich to oversee the TV+ division over two years ago.

Plepler told the Times that a condition of his arrival at Apple is that Van Amburg and Erlich were game. This makes sense on Pleplers part, given that corporate dust-ups appear to be the driving force behind his leaving HBO. Based on Pleplers statements to the Timesspecifically that all he wants to do is run my own little PT boatthat probably also involved ensuring some creative autonomy for his direction.

But Pleplers Apple dealto be clear he is not running TV+, just contributingalso feels significant in light of the reception of Apples new tentpole service. TV+ just hasnt popped on the cultural landscape like Apple might have wanted. And there were issues early on, like axing a show based on Dr. Dres life because it was too violent, and canceling one about Richard Gere on a shooting spree because it wasnt friendly enough.

But the initial launch of TV+s 2019 slate is where the real problem lies. Despite The Morning Shows Golden Globe nods, the showApples biggest bet for its debut content offeringsgenerated mixed reviews, as did much of Apples other original content. It didnt get anywhere near the attention that it, in theory, should have.

For All Mankind, the platforms science fiction drama series about the space race from Hugo- and Emmy Award-winning showrunner Ron Moore, made nowhere near the splash it should have. Yet itis exactly the kind of weird, alt-historical series that should have been a contender during awards season.

Part of the issue with this seriesas with virtually all of Apples content offeringsis that Apples typical shroud-of-mystery and tight-lipped approach to its product rollouts is fundamentally at odds with how you make people give a shit about entertainment. There was virtually zero buzz about these respective shows prior to launch because we knew nothing about them. All viewers knew prior to launch day, based on rumors, was that Apple TV+ amounted to nothing more than an expensive NBC. That weve still heard little about its 2020 lineup doesnt exactly help its cause.

For a company that hopes to position itself as a kind of taste-making kingpin for news, entertainment, and music, its thin slate of content upon launch hinted that Apples own hubris may have impeded its ability to meet the expectations it had fanned for viewers and critics.

Mark Duplass, who stars as Chip in The Morning Show, said as much in a recent interview this week. I think Apple knows this now, but they didnt do a very good job of welcoming critics into the process because theyre used to keeping their product secret, When youre dealing with critics, you dont keep secrets, Duplass told The Hollywood Reporter during a red carpet review for Bombshell. The critics did not like that, and I think they lashed out a little bit.

As The Hollywood Reporter noted, theres a pretty big discrepancy between audience and critical reception of that series in particular. (Your feelings on Duplasss show may depend, in part, on your individual response to it using a real national tragedy as the backdrop for a cringe-worthy plot device.) But theres no doubt the platform as a whole could use some work, and theres a reason that so many other of Apples debut series were snubbed for their own awards nods.

The deal with Plepler feels like a desire to alter course for Apple. Plepler did tell the Times explicitly that he does not want to run anything again and instead wants to focus on producing. Still between TV+s muted debut and his deal, if I were running TV+ right now I might be worried.

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The Current Heads of Apple TV+ Should Be Terrified - Gizmodo