• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, April 12, 2016

To rival Netflix and Amazon as a bona fide entertainment platform, Apple knows that original content is a must. It’s the only way to truly differentiate your service, and hit shows are priceless from a marketing perspective.

But a show about apps?!

Yes, the tech giant has enlisted Will.i.am and veteran TV execs Ben Silverman and Howard Owens to develop a non-scripted series about apps.

Of course, we love apps here at MediaPost, and it would be unfair to judge the forthcoming show before we know more about it.

But Apple’s app show doesn’t strike many as particularly promising.

Considering that Apple has so much invested in its App Store, The New Times Times’ Emily Steel thinks the shows sounds “more like a marketing campaign than a blockbuster production.”

Likewise, The Washington Post asks whether the show is “original programming or an extended commercial?”

Suggesting the latter, Apple appears more interested in talking about its App Store than the show. “One of the things with the app store that was always great about it was the great ideas that people had to build things and create things,” Apple’s SVP of Web software and services Eddy Cue tells the Times.

Quartz’s Adam Epstein says he would have expected more from Apple. “An Apple show about apps is as safe as it gets,” he writes.

“Making a must-see TV show out of unscripted interviews with app developers, however, will be a challenge,” as Fortune notes.

Maybe all these low expectations will ultimately work in Apple’s favor. If not, it always has a healthy hardware business to fall back on.

This column was previously published in Moblog on March 25, 2016.