BroadwayNYC2 said: "Some of y’all treat signing up for a streaming service for a month is like climbing Mount Everest. "
I know we've been referring to Apple's streaming service as AppleTV for convenience, but we are inaccurate and may demonstrate why it was the poor choice for Come from Away's release. AppleTV has been around since 2007, and is actually a physical box with remote. It was developed to turn a TV into a smart tv, but was (and is still) rather expensive.
The streaming service, AppleTV+, has only been around since 2019. And while it is finally starting to appear on non-Apple media devices, I think that a lot of people still assume that you need the AppleTV device to watch AppleTV+ programming. This is no doubt a result of Apple's duplicitous marketing, which as early as this year didn't go to great lengths to differentiate between the two (they were presented on the official site on the same page, leading a casual observe to believe you needed the device to view the content). They are now much better at separating the two, though they still try to connect the two in a prospective subscriber's mind.
So the issue is visibility. AppleTV+ isn't doing anywhere near the amount of marketing that Disney+ did for Hamilton. Since Come from Away hasn't had the same mainstream crossover appeal, it's not going to drive new paid subscriptions, which is important to continue this type of content investment (even people associated with the show are telling people just to get the free trial).
Yes, $5/month isn't much, but if it's the only content on the service that you are interested in, paying $60/year isn't a bargain, especially when I can watch a Blu-Ray for years for only $20-30 total.