Apple today announced that it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes Store. 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. ABC, CBS, FOX and The CW, along with more than 50 cable networks, are signed up to sell TV shows from their upcoming season on iTunes at $1.99 per episode.
“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, in the press release. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”
Apple’s agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September. NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.
Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/08/31itunes.html
So, this is totally off-topic, but, you know, there’s this cool website Torrents.to. It searches major torrent sites for stuff. You just type in a search term, say, oh, we don’t know, “heroes” or “office” or “earl” or any other random word, pick a torrent site to search and it returns results along with handy tabs across the top, so you can quickly conduct the same search on any major torrent site. It’s really pretty cool and works rather well. If you Google for “Mac BitTorrent Client,” a ton of results are returned, too.
Anyway, back to news that Apple’s iTunes Store is dropping NBC shows after NBC demands would have raised show prices to $4.99 per episode: it’s disappointing that we won’t be able to watch NBC TV shows anymore.
Contact NBC:
NBC Main Telephone Numbers: 212 315-9016 and 212-664-4444
Email: NBCUniSupport@nbcuni.com
Web Form: http://www.nbcuni.com/About_NBC_Universal/Contact_Us/
Jupiter Research anaylst Michael Gartenberg blogs, “Apple’s looking good here, championing users. NBC is making a mistake, $4.99 is way too high per episode… and this is the type of move that pushes users to look for other places to get the content (like in hi-def for free over BitTorrent). Legal paid content drives consumers to do the right thing, take it away and nature will abhor the vacuum it creates. Sometimes I think God put video content guys on the planet to make the music guys look progressive and visionary.”
MacDailyNews Note: Please see related article: NBC: Apple’s iTunes, iPod powering broadcast ratings for ‘The Office’ – January 17, 2006
Why the hell would anyone pay $4.99 for something they can DVR for free?
At $1.99 it’s and impulse purchase, at $4.99 people start thinking about it.
Whomever is in charge of the strategy at NBC is a moron.
NBC is gonna be kicking themselves for leaving itunes how stupid can they get.
I like it. Apple won’t be anybody’s bitch.
It’s a strong and powerful signal, and NBC will come around eventually.
Can’t wait for the new iPods next week . . .
Good move Apple
Also, if any other content providers go along with NBC in this direction, Apple should just screw them by enabling full DVR capability on the AppleTV with the ability to scrub out ads and the ability to upload to iTunes/iPods.
So basically what the Universal Media Group is telling consumers is that they want you to pirate their content, because they’re not going to give you any reasonable way to access it legally.
Greedy jerks. I think I’ll boycott broadcast NBC television in return for their consideration of their customers.
There are some not-so-subtle fighting words in Apple’s statement. They’re trying to get the public on their side by mentioning the price increase, and get NBC investors on their side by mentioning the tens-of-millions of iTunes users. I’ll bet Jobs personally wrote that statement. Now he’s gone to hardball. Play ball!
What is with these industry jackasses who continually want to cut open the goose that lays the golden eggs? Does not compute.
If you are planning to be, go f**k yourself and leave now… right now…
NBC is my favorite tv network, but if the F with Apple, they will loose as a TV viewer….
The barn door is open, most of the horses have left the stable, so let’s put up a sign charging 250% more for the few remaining nags.
Brilliant.
Aren’t they third in the ratings behind CBS and ABC? I can’t see how this is going to help that situation.
I also think this is really going to make their new fall shows that much more vulnerable and more difficult to develop a loyal audience. What are they going to do, go with the second best online distribution method. And that would be who?
Guess its torrents or bust…Honestly how do some of these people get put in charge of companies? Do they not understanding they basically just wrote off millions in revenues to their share holders? Anyway should be interesting to see how this plays out and who caves. My bet: Universal will try to quietly ‘re-join’ the iTunes store once they realize the millions they are losing out on. Of course, this is right after someone gets fired over it.
Pulling that crap for $1/Zune sold may work on Microsoft but the buck stops here Universal.
Greed!
Does anyone else think that $1.99 is still too much for a TV show? It is very rare that I ever consider paying that much for something that I will most likely watch once. $.99 is more on the mark for a television show. $4.99 for a TV show is outrageous!! Heck, I can buy movies at Target for less than that.
It will be sad to see Battlestar Galactica gone but there really wasn’t anything else from NBC that I would even have wanted to download anyway. Perhaps, they should worry about finding some quality programming for their networks rather than trying to rape the population for the very few shows that people might actually want to watch. They aren’t #1 anymore as the days of Friends, Frasier, and Seinfeld are gone. However, it is apparent that the arrogance of being #1 for so long still lingers
Bring it on!!!
I think NBC underestimated Apple.
Pulling the show in september was probably not expected by CNBC who thought they have till December to pressure Apple to raise prices.
At $1.99 it’s and impulse purchase, at $4.99 people start thinking about it.
Episodes of NOVA are $7.99, and I’m sure I’ve seen higher.
Seriously, that’s $120 a season for one show. You can buy the DVD of a show for $30. That’s just stupid on NBC’s part.
They should and probably will fire the moron that thought up that idea. Greedy idiots! $1.99 is an impulse buy. $3.99 or more for a t.v. show is just a great reason to fire up bit torrent.
It’s all about the money. In wonder if their stuff will show up at the Zune Store?
Sorry, I’m not paying $5 an episode for a TV show? The Office, for that much? It simply isn’t worth it. Next season they are planning on 30 episodes, so, that is $150 for a TV show? A TV SHOW?
Insane. Go Apple! Go!
Wow, let’s do some math here. My favorite NBC show is The Office. Season 3 of The Office had 25 episodes (21 half-hour plus 2 full-hour). On iTunes today, you can buy Season 3 for $34. When the DVD comes out on September 4, it should cost about $40 (Season 2 was $37). With NBC’s proposed pricing scheme, that would mean Season 4 would cost $124.75 on iTunes (given 25 episodes at $4.99 each). So let’s see here: $124.75 for low-quality, DRM-laden, no special-features iTunes episodes; or $40 for high-quality episodes with special features that can be ripped to my computer without DRM. Ummmm…good work NBC, you nailed that one. Thank you Apple, for at least attempting to protect the consumer.
NBC has decided they cannot make nearly as much via iTunes vs. selling ad space via traditional TV.
Thus, if the model to continue moving towards IPTV continues (and it will), and iTunes becomes the dominate player (likely), NBC will be showing TV via iTunes to home TV’s (via AppleTV) and start to lose their shirts in revenues.
The result is a quick fix by jacking up the price, but Apple isn’t going to play ball this way.
NBC may fall back to launching their own online store, which will be a horrific play.
Consumers want one main distributor to acquire their content, and iTunes is the best there is on the market today.
NBC is more than likely to be:
– Using this as a pricing tactic to force Apple’s hand and see what Apple is made of….
– Will be back by next fall, bending to the will of iTunes pricing.
@Grigori
I hope that you aren’t comparing the quality of an episode of Nova (which is, BTW, produced by a non-profit entity and shown on PBS that does not get ad revenues for broadcasts) with that of an NBC sitcom (more appropriately called “sh*tcom”)
Yeah, Apple is the greedy one, right?
Imagine an NBC conference room today…
“So, Dave, great idea pressuring Apple like that! We showed THEM we value our shows! I’m really impressed by how you made a stand and didn’t budge.”
“Thanks, boss!”
“So, what’s the plan now? How do we make up the lost revenue from iTunes sales? Make me a millionaire, kid!”
“Ummm… well… I thought we’d try raising our ad prices.”
“Hmm. That won’t work. We can bully our sellers, but not our advertisers.”
“Ok… how about… we make up the money by selling on OTHER digital media stores?”
“Such as…?”
“Errr well, I haven’t done the research yet, but… Err…”
“It’s going to be a busy Fall season, Dave.”