After “Widow’s Bay” took best comedy honors at the Emmy Awards on Monday night, the show’s creator, Katie Dippold, grabbed her statuette and paid tribute to “the wonderful weirdos” who worked on the show. She then quickly switched gears because she had a tech colossus to thank: Apple.
“They truly just let us do this weird show,” she said from the Emmys stage.
It was a big win for “Widow’s Bay,” a horror-comedy about the oddball inhabitants of a haunted New England island. The show, which stars Matthew Rhys, was lauded by Emmy voters for being a distinctly original series in a television landscape that relies a bit too much on old ideas and recycled intellectual property.
The victory also cemented Apple’s now-critical place in the entertainment industry.
Fueled by “Widow’s Bay,” which set a record for most Emmy wins for a comedy series, with 14, as well as sci-fi series “Pluribus” and “Slow Horses,” Apple broke a long-running streak on Monday night. Since 2003, HBO, Netflix and FX have been the only outlets to claim bragging rights on Emmys night. Apple’s 28 awards this year easily outpaced both.
Apple’s entry into Hollywood less than a decade ago — the company started buying projects in 2017, and debuted its streaming service in 2019 — was greeted with skepticism. Other technology companies, including Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo, had also started making scripted TV series before quickly fleeing town. Becoming an entertainment studio is as expensive as finding hits is a slow, unpredictable and frustrating process.
While Apple TV remains little watched compared with its competitors, the company has stuck with it.
“When we started this seven years ago, it’s hard to imagine that we’d be here today,” said Eddy Cue, a top Apple executive who started the entertainment division and hired the company’s lead Hollywood executives, Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht.
Mr. Cue was speaking at the Emmys official after party shortly after he led a triumphant, fist-raising tequila-shot toast to his colleagues.
One of the people in the toast circle was Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus. Many in Hollywood have been anxious that Apple’s foray into entertainment — seemingly not a core business interest — could be curtailed when Mr. Ternus, the company’s head of hardware engineering, took over from Tim Cook. But his presence at the ceremony suggested otherwise.
“At Apple, we always focus on the customer, build the best thing that we can on the product side, and the Apple TV team is doing the exact same thing with TV shows,” Mr. Ternus said during an interview at the after party.
He added: “Seven years to have done all of this is extraordinary, but we’re just getting started.”
Since 2022, nearly every media company has drastically cut back on spending. The era of Peak TV is over; the number of Emmy-eligible dramas, comedies and limited series this year, 212, declined 39 percent from four years ago.
But Apple, often looking for projects with big stars and bigger budgets, is still spending. “At a time of profound change in our business, their willingness to think long-term and invest in artists really stands out,” said Richard Weitz, a co-chairman of the WME Group, which includes one of the major talent agencies in Hollywood.
He continued: “They’re serious, they’re spending money and they’re making a lot of programming — they’ve become absolutely critical to our marketplace.”
This is not the first time Apple has proved popular with award voters. It won best picture at the 2022 Oscars with “Coda” and took best comedy at the Emmys three times before — twice with “Ted Lasso” and last year with “The Studio.”
The company’s streaming service, which, unlike Netflix and Disney, doesn’t have a library of old movies and TV series, is still not widely watched, however. In July, it made up 0.5 percent of all TV viewing time, a fraction of its competitors’, according to Nielsen. Netflix attracted nearly 8 percent of all viewing time in the United States, Disney’s streaming services came in at close to 5 percent, and free streaming services like Roku and Tubi also had more viewership.
Though Apple’s top hits, like “Ted Lasso” and “Severance,” draw big audiences, the shows that won big at the Emmys struggled to find viewers. “Widow’s Bay” was the least watched of all the best comedy nominees, Nielsen said. In the drama category, Apple’s three entrants — “Pluribus,” “Your Friends & Neighbors,” and “Slow Horses” — ranked among the least-watched drama series nominees, and were dwarfed by one of the biggest hits in television, “The Pitt” on HBO Max.
“The Pitt,” which took best drama honors for the second year in a row, helped HBO Max finish second on Emmy night, with 21 awards. “DTF St. Louis” won best limited series, and Jean Smart, the star of “Hacks,” tied Cloris Leachman and Julia Louis-Dreyfus for most acting Emmy wins ever (eight).
For the moment, though, Apple TV has passed Netflix when it comes to making prestige television. Netflix won just 16 Emmys this year, its lowest output since 2016 when the company produced fewer programs than it does now.
Back at the Emmys after party, Mr. Cue was taking it all in.
“We want to create the best shows on television,” he said. “We want them to be about quality. We want to make people cry. We want people to laugh. We want to make people think.”
He added: “I’m pinching myself, honestly.”
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