How Apple plans to win the streaming wars without 'Friends' or 'Game of Thrones'
LOS ANGELES - Roughly two years ago, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg stood in front of a blank wall at Apple's content division in Culver City and began mapping out, with taped notecards, the tech giant's plan to take on Hollywood.
The former Sony Pictures Television presidents, freshly installed as heads of worldwide video programming for Apple, started brainstorming with an assembly of employees. Hit shows and movies of the moment - including, yes, "Game of Thrones" - were part of the patchwork. Then came guiding principles, words like "humanity" and "simplicity."
Two years later, seated in Erlicht's office amid the frenzy leading up to the launch of Apple's subscription streaming service, Apple TV+, the pair elaborated on those values.
"Simple ideas that allowed you to go deeper and express yourself more," Van Amburg said. "[It's] sort of at the core of a lot of what [Apple] products do. They feel simple, but they allow you to do incredibly complex things."
"We had a very diverse representation of shows on the
