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eventually production companies will negotiate directly with Apple and other Net video companies when developing shows...the networks better be careful...they could become irrelevant

More Fox News please.

TV Networks are almost as clueless as the recording industry.

Well said. Television is a means of distribution. iTunes is a means of distribution. Television networks, like the major record companies, better learn how to treat their talent or it will leave. We've all heard how the major record companies screwed over artists for years and years, thus making something like iTunes an inevitability. Will the networks learn from that disaster or will they have to be taught firsthand?

@BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots

I'm wit chu.

Good take MDN. Apple owns the store. The store ultimately decides on the price. If the merchandise it too expensive, the store can decide not to offer it. Sounds like what Apple did with NBC.

In the meantime the BB is still the number one Smartphone. All those reports were wrong. I told you guys the iPhone can't compete at all with the BB, Treos and Winmobile 6. In fact the new Palm is based on that. So lets get our feet back on solid ground again and quit these lofty dreams of iPhone dominance.

There are two pricing models, depending on the store and the "producer". Most stores buy product and then sell it for whatever seems like a price designed to maximize profit - even if that is below their cost for that product in the hope they can use that low price to draw people in to buy other products at a profit to the store. Some producers - like Apple - insist that stores sell Apple products at prices set by Apple. They do not sell product to people who a) do not agree to do this in advance or b) deviate from the program. Most TV is produced at a "fixed cost" and sold to the networks bidding the most, the networks profit based on the ads they place with the shows. The producers can cut costs with product placements and the like.
If NBC does not feel they are generating enough profit selling to Apple at Apple's price, then they have two choices - find another to sell to or exit the market. Nobody said business was for cowards.
DLMeyer - the Voice of G.L.Horton's Stage Page Pod Cast - for theater lovers

Why not just let the studios set a MSRP for digital downloads and let iTunes determine how much they want to sell it for. This is such a radical idea that....

Oh wait. They already use that model for DVD's, CD's........

This still don't get the fact that if they try to fleece us, we'll go elsewhere. Must be their way to shut down iTunes so they can force everyone to pay $14.95 for a new song from Britney.

What's going on in Poland anyway?

Look everyone! ZuneTang is now called Originalrecipes.

Performance art at it's finest.

I couldn't care less about any of this. What I want to know is when can I get iTunes videos of ChrissyOne having barbecue sauce poured all over her and being worked like a rib?

News Corp is NBC's big partner in Hulu, right? But had enough intelligence to look at those new nanos before doing anything foolish.

Then again, SJ NEEDED to bitch slap someone to fire a shot across UMG's bow. NBC, the #4 network, perfect. He might have made it a point to be extra unreasonable with them. (Hence the 99c story.) And guess who's going to stay #4?

Plus, well.. how much you gonna trust a organization that has a channel called "MS.." ANYTHING?

The important takeaway in the interview is that Hulu is real time ad supported view on computer. That is sooooooo not the same as buying from the iTS and watching on a device of your choosing including apple tv and your touch, commercial free.

Don't let the door slam into you on the way out, nbc!

Forget just ChrissyOne. At this point I'll accept iTunes videos of any sort here in Canada. That would be neat. Then we could buy them and, apparently, put them on an iPod and watch them. Crazy stuff they can do now.

"$14.95 for a new song from Britney."

Chunky Britney ("Chutney") will have a hard enough time feeding her two little mistakes when her money trough runs dry.

excuse me, i forgot. NBC has a deal with amazon. So they'll have the SanDisk market covered (hey SanDisk is #2!) And they can charge all those SanDisk video download customers any price they like.

Oh yeah, Amazon and SanDisk... For The Win!

"eventually production companies will negotiate directly with Apple [...]

Sigh...

Uh, kids? Have you not been paying attention?

The Television Networks have been subsumed by the production companies (or vice-versa, depending on your POV).

ABC? Owned by Disney. Fox is, of course, owned by 20th Century Fox. NBC is a corporate maze, granted, but Universal owns a big chunk. CBS? Viacom (which owns Paramount).

And if you look at the programs running on those networks, you'll find the vast majority of the programs are produced either directly by the studios or "in association with" with the studios (meaning the network's studio has some amount of ownership).

Essentially, this started with syndication back in the 1980s. Programming which had been cancelled on the networks were making good money for the studios being syndicated to individual TV stations. Also, studios were going directly to independant stations and providing programming ("Star Trek: The Next Generation" is the classic example of this, but there were others).

The TV Networks felt the heat from increased competition from cable networks and such. Revenues were down from advertising because they didn't have as many viewers and the days of the "Tri-opoly" were not coming back. The solution, of course, was to create, produce, and air the shows. That way, they get the money throughout the life of the show.

Thus, studios and TV Networks merged. The TV Network provides an outlet for the studios to promote their shows (and make money doing so). If a show is popular on a TV network, in can be sold directly to consumers (via DVD) as well as in syndication to stations.

So the whole situation where the Studios would sell directly to iTunes? Why? They already have a vested interest in selling to the TV Network that they are a part of.

There are smaller production companies, granted, and they end up signing deals to produce programming "in association with" the major studios. They could go directly to iTunes. The problem then becomes promotion.

Production companies can't make direct deals with Apple because in most cases, an NBC type network will retain the world wide rights, including digital distribution.

In some cases, production companies will keep those rights as well international distribution rights but not usually.

Didn't FOX originally produce the X Files? If so, when are we going to get that show on iTunes? And less FOX "News" please.

We interupt this program for breaking news....we have no breaking news today....now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

MDN: exactly

Had the record companies had the power to determine pricing, iTunes would not be what it is today. And I think deep in their hearts, these execs know that.

@Say What?
"What I want to know is when can I get iTunes videos of ChrissyOne having barbecue sauce poured all over her and being worked like a rib?"

I'm pretty sure that C1 prefers white wine, or maybe even baby oil after labor day. Certainly not bbq sauce.

Fox owns National Geographic?
Hmmn, I didn't know neocons like nature.

Let's examine basic business sense. Networks can either A) Invest time, money, and technolgy into unproven media stores with unproven profit margins with maximum risks, and minimal benefits, or B) share profits with a proven winner ITMS, which increases market and mindshare with basically no time and expense to networks because Apple does the heavy lifting. Unfortunately, Apple makes it seem so easy that the poor schmucks imagine everyone else can do it too!!! LOL at them!!!

Eventually the networks will combine advertising and downloading by offering free downloaded shows with commercials. Maybe they'll have the brains to figure out they could externalize distribution costs by offering the shows using a closed bittorent tracker model--register for an account so the network can at least try to get your demographic data, the network can track downloads to the account, the link site itself can be network owned and generate additional ad income, and the network could offer incentives to people that seed for a long time, such as coupons from....their advertisers!

That this would be a successful model is so obvious that it is painful to think about the number of years that will pass before the networks embrace it.

The groudwork has already been made by surveys showing that when people tivo a show most of them run the program straight through, including the commercials.

That this could allow more targeting advertising is even more painfully obvious--there's no reason, for instance, that different torrents of the same show couldn't be distributed so that, for instance, teenage girls are pulling the same torrent containing the typical ads for teenage girls, while adults watching the same show could get a different mix of ads.

There would be a hell of a lot more interest in that than streaming, with the inherent worse picture quality, network hickups, etc.

And Apple wouldn't mind losing those sales at all.

"In the meantime the BB is still the number one Smartphone. All those reports were wrong. I told you guys the iPhone can't compete at all with the BB, Treos and Winmobile 6. In fact the new Palm is based on that. So lets get our feet back on solid ground again and quit these lofty dreams of iPhone dominance."

why does this sound like someone who, 3 days after having lost an argument, comes into the room, interrupts a different topic, and says "and another thing..."???

MW: "miles" as in how far from relevant your observation is.

Hurray, I am happy to hear this.

I most of what is on and available from FOX.

d

PEOPLE rather as they go then subscribe to a whack of channels that they can not see all at once anyways.

1) DVD or 2) iTunes

These are the BEST solutions be on a PC or MAC.

Done.

And here I thought selling through iTunes was just icing on the cake for the networks. Aren't they already making money for the shows through advertising? Aren't they already getting $50-60 for each box set at Amazon and Best Buy?

Sure, DVDs will eventually go the way of the 8-track and people will be purchasing downloaded content, but that is a little ways off. Oh, I get it now, they are greedy. Dear Mr. Network Suit: we can add up the cost of a low-res season of 30 Rock versus the cost of owning the hi-res, extra features DVD...does not compute.

Sorry, Apple is just whining about the practice that they themselves put in place.

Apple products cost the same prices no matter where you purchase them. Why? Is it because all of the sales channels decided to keep it "fair", or is it because Apple mandated the prices to the sales channels and the channels have no say in chaning it up or down?

I'm usually an Apple supporter, but this is just a case of wanting your cake and eating it too.

Grow up Apple!