NBC & Apple Break Up

[Rob Williams]

From our news:

NBC announced the other day that they've decided to not renew their ongoing contract with Apple, which means all of the NBC sitcoms and dramas will no longer be available for purchase. This is all due to the fact that they were unable to come to a reasonable agreement, similar to what happened with Universal a few months back. Given that, it's easy to think that Apple must be the cause, but no, not at all. Here's what was given as the reason in the official release out of Apple:

"The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99."

Not much of a surprise though. Just look at the hassles that NBC has caused other companies in the past, including YouTube. Seriously. Who in the heck is running this network? Them pulling out of Apple means one thing... more piracy, less revenue. Not difficult to do the math.

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"We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. "We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers."

Source: Apple.com
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[madstork91]

4.99 is a lil high.

1.99 might be a lil low.

Something in between? I mean... come on!

 

[Rob Williams]

$1.99 doesn't seem a little low at all. Most people who buy these episodes buy more than one... each week. That would add up awful fast.

Also from our news, as a follow-up:

We posted yesterday that NBC and Apple were officially breaking up. According to Apple, it was primarily due to the fact that NBC wanted to charge upwards of $4.99 per episode. Well, NBC issued a counter-argument yesterday that pointed out it wasn't really about money, but rather how they lacked the ability to create custom packages that would be appealing to the consumer. Yeah. That seems likely.

Not to end things there, they brought the security issue into play, noting: "since it is estimated that the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material." Is it really that common for people to download TV shows from the web and copy them to their iPod? It comes as a surprise to me. Regardless, you don't have to look too hard to realize that NBC is the one at fault here.

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Right. This has exactly WHAT to do with legitimately selling shows to paying customers, NBC? We think this is the telling quote: "It is clear that Apple's retail pricing strategy for its iTunes service is designed to drive sales of Apple devices, at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying." Yeah, pretty clear it's still about the money for those guys.

Source: Engadget
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[BentFez]

Amazon has the NBC content now, right? I hope the Amazon drm free music store competes well with iTunes, we'll all benefit.