Not enough shoutouts for Shrinking here...
Ted Lasso is definitely holding up the platform, no disagreement, but there's some other great content there as well. Prehistoric Planet, too.
Ted Lasso and Shrinking are both made by Bill Lawrence, who also made Spin City, Scrubs, and Cougar Town.
It's not Apple that makes the shows good.
Apple licenses the content from the creators -- that's true of almost every network and many film distributors as well.
Few distributors make their content in house. 'Netflix Original ' doesn't mean it was made by 'Netflix Studios' -- they don't exist. What happened was (for a series) that either a complete season or a pilot was shopped around, and Netflix bought the (exclusive) rights, which made that piece of content a Netflix Original. For films, they have usually already been made and are in a limited theatrical run (eg. Festivals) or are being shopped around privately. I imagine a limited few have distribution deals made prior to production, but that's still not 'Netflix' (or Apple) making that content.
Apples launch content (eg. Ted Lasso) was produced to prop up the platform, but the method by which that content was discovered, funded and then licensed is not much different from how a traditional network (like NBC) might function.
Shrinking is right up there with Ted Lasso - the only two shows I subscribed to Apple TV for. Lol
