• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 8 hours ago

Apple TV keeps moving higher -- on the quality level. Should consumers care?

The premium streamer continues to work under the radar of the big players -- including Netflix, Prime Video, HBO Max and Disney+ -- in scoring big awards.

For these past Emmy Awards, Apple TV took more trophies (with 28) than Netflix (16) and HBO Max (21), which both had reigned with awards for many years.  Last year, HBO/HBO Max and Netflix tied with 30 wins each, while Apple had 22.

Shows like “Severance,” “Ted Lasso,, “Slow Horses” and many others earned big results.This year's surprise big winner, horror-comedy “Widow’s Bay” -- set a new record for the most Emmy wins by a comedy -- with 14 pieces of Emmy hardware.

“Widow’s Bay” set a new record, beating out the previous holder from Apple TV, “The Studio,” which had 13 awards. Overall, Apple won six Primetime Emmys and 20 Creative Arts Emmys.

Specific show results include:

--“Pluribus" (freshman drama) — won the Lead Actress in a Drama award for Rhea Seehorn and a writing award for Vince Gilligan.

--"Slow Horses" — took home the Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series award for Saul Metzstein.

--"Margo's Got Money Troubles" and "Palm Royale" each picked up three awards for the Creative Arts.

Separately, there may have been some overlap among Apple TV and Netflix: Matthew Rhys won as the lead actor for both his Netflix show "The Beast in Me," and Apple's "Widow's Bay" in the same night.

If there has been slight criticism of Apple TV, it would be that it does not have the same number of original shows and movies that Netflix, Prime Video or other other legacy media-centric company platforms have -- including Paramount+, Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock.

Notably, it seems that when it comes to "quality," Apple TV has a strong average track record. For example, of its 87 Emmy nominations, nearly one-third are registered in Emmy award wins.

And let's not leave big entertainment projects out of the picture. A couple of years ago in 2022, Apple TV scored the first ever Best Picture win for streamer for “CODA.” Not even Netflix has won one of those.

Now the big question: What kind of marketing can Apple TV do to tout this award result -- on a quality/critic reviewer point of view?

The next step for Apple TV may be possibly considering an Apple TV ad-supported tier.

Would that change the dynamics of its strong creative entertainment output?