Apple $AAPL knows it is spending too much on TV shows and movies you have probably never seen — let alone heard of.
The company is exploring a new approach to Apple TV+ after dishing out a whopping $20 billion on original content, Bloomberg reported.
The outlet reported that Apple executive Eddy Cue has been meeting with Apple TV+’s studio chiefs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht about reining in budgets. Van Amburg and Erlicht have also reportedly been telling people the streamer wants to shed its reputation for being the industry’s biggest spender.
Apple has dropped huge sums of money for shows and movies, like $250 million for the miniseries “Masters of Air,” which it released this year to little traction.
The streamer has also doled out more than $500 million on movies from Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Matthew Vaughn, Bloomberg said.
Despite its monumental spending, it has just 0.2% of TV viewership in the US, with fewer views in a month than Netflix $NFLX gets in a mere 24 hours. It has also struggled to increase subscribers.
Apple TV+’s problems haven’t seemed to particularly worry the tech giant, since streaming is not at the core of its business. Nonetheless, the days of its unlimited spending seem to be numbered, something it has already been signaling in its reticence to renew shows for third seasons, according to Bloomberg data.
Apple TV+ is notably the last major streaming service without an ad tier. That’s likely to change after the company hired Joseph Cady, an ad executive from NBCUniversal, earlier this year.