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Before Apple TV Gets a Refresh, It Gets Video You Can't See Anywhere Else

WME/IMG brings new fashion channel M2M to Apple TV for three months.

Made to Measure
Peter Kafka covers media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

Apple is coming out with a new Apple TV box soon. But first, the old Apple TV is getting some new stuff — stuff that Apple will have exclusively, for a while.

WME/IMG, the talent agency conglomerate, is launching Made to Measure, a new video service focused on fashion, on Apple TV today. Aside from promotional snippets, Apple’s TV box will be the only place you can see the free, ad-supported service’s stuff until January, when it will start showing up on other platforms, too.

M2M will feature short videos that WME has created for the channel, featuring interviews and mini-documentaries about people who will mean a lot to people who care about fashion, and less so to people like me, who recently bought a blazer at Men’s Wearhouse.*

For the former group, here’s an example: “‘Tea at the Beatrice’: An intimate series of one-on-one interviews with fashion insiders, hosted by Glenn O’Brien. Guests will include Gisele, [the people behind] Proenza Schouler, and Richard Prince.”

WME says it will also show long-form documentaries on the channel, as well as footage from runway shows from the likes of Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, who I have heard of.

One thing that won’t be in M2M: Money from Apple.

WME put out word about the channel in September, shortly after a report that Apple was talking to Hollywood players about funding exclusive content. So it was natural to combine the two ideas. But that’s not the case: If Apple is interested in paying people to make stuff for them, this is not an example of that.

There’s “no direct financial relationship” between the two companies, says Jon Dube, WME/IMG’s general manager of digital, who oversaw the project. On the other hand, he says, “Apple TV’s audience is very much passionate about fashion.”

Dube won’t discuss the relationship beyond that, but I’m going to guess that WME/IMG is giving Apple three months of exclusivity with the understanding that Apple will give it some promotional push.

That could be helpful when the new Apple TV hits the market in next week. While Apple kept a tight rein on the number of apps on the old box, Tim Cook is opening up Apple TV’s platform (more or less) to developers on the new one, which means that users will suddenly have a whole lot of options when they want to stream video (or play games, or check out that Craftsman on Zillow). That means that an extra promotional push could be worth more than ever.

Here’s what appears to be a promo clip for an M2M video about actor Marcello Mastroianni. I’m not quite sure about his relationship to fashion, but again, I’m not the target audience:

* I did, in fact, like the way I looked, which was like someone who just bought a blazer at Men’s Wearhouse.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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