Jon Stewart was furious when his Apple TV+ show was cancelled after just two seasons, blaming it all on the company’s inherent flaws, but he’s returned to the company this election season to make himself relevant again.
his town During the podcast, Stewart revealed his “aha moment” about the future of the Apple TV+ series. problemThis came after he interviewed economist and former Obama administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers during his sophomore season.
He didn’t suffer from Apple executives’ censorship of the Summers interview or any other episodes, but he found that they and Apple’s ideas of what constitutes good and truthful programming did not line up.
The experience reminded Stewart that “there’s a mantra we all need to remember: Corporations are cowards. They always are, and they always have been.”
Stewart said Summers had encouraged the Fed to cut interest rates substantially, but that such a move would lead to mass unemployment. He said Summers felt that was acceptable because it was a “utilitarian approach” to getting the economy going again, summing up Summers’s policies.
But Stewart said he pushed back against Summers by asking about soaring corporate profits.
“My point is, what about corporate profits? This doesn’t address at all how companies have lost profits through the pandemic,” Stewart said, clearly exasperated that companies were still making profits even at the height of the pandemic.
But after the show was completed and Apple executives had seen it, Stewart said, his attacks on corporate interests were not well received at the top, and they eventually asked him, “Are you going to use the Summers story?” The question sparked a lengthy discussion between his staff and Apple executives that ultimately led Stewart to realize, “Our objectives were completely misaligned.”
Just months after Summers’ interview, the show came to an end and will run for two seasons from 2021 to 2023.
“We’re trying to execute the best and most insightful intentions we can, and they’re defending a different agenda. That’s when we knew we were in trouble, and that’s just how it went,” Stewart said.
Stewart also said that working at AppleTV+ is very different from working at Paramount Global’s Comedy Central because while the cable network is a content company, AppleTV is just a side business for Apple, whose real interests lie elsewhere.
“If you work at a content company, all the metrics you need to know to determine whether you’re successful in that market are [for The Problem]”They even said to us, there were moments where you were drawing people to your platform, performing great on your platform, building awareness, and then you left the platform, and you just say, ‘Please stop,'” Stewart told the podcast audience.
Stewart said, Ted Lasso If the show is a hit for Apple, that’s all well and good, but if the show is perceived to undermine Apple’s actual business interests, then there’s no point in the show being successful.
“Apple is not just a content company, they have a whole other side business,” he said. “If you think about it, content for them, I don’t want to say it facetious, is not at the core of their brand identity.”
“I realized I couldn’t help it. [Apple] “In a way that I think I could have helped Comedy Central. I think I could have hurt them, depending on their determination,” he said.
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