“That Apple will no longer distribute NBC television shows through its iTunes store should have surprised no one, of course,” Shinal reports. “The love went out of this marriage back in March, when NBC Universal formed a joint venture with News Corp. for a new Web-based video network to be distributed through Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time-Warner’s AOL unit.”
“The Apple-NBC story in a nutshell is that NBC Universal executives did a bad impersonation of Marlon Brando and made Jobs an offer that he couldn’t accept,” Shinal reports. “According to the release from Apple, NBC’s offer would have forced the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to raise the price of an episode to $4.99 from $1.99. Rather than wait until December, when the current agreement ends, Jobs slammed the door on the relationship.”
“The question now is who will be more hurt by the split,” Shinal reports. “Apple itself says that about 30% of its iTunes TV episode sales come from NBC shows, including some of the most popular on the site. That could ding revenue growth, but probably not profit, because Apple uses content as something close to a loss leader to spur iPod sales. For NBC, though, the divorce means it loses its best Web-based distribution tool before the joint venture with News Corp. is up and running.”
Shinal reports, “There is still no firm date for when consumers will be able to watch shows on Hulu, and the chances of it going smoothly are low, for at least three reasons.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Linux Guy And Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: Please see related article: NBC: Apple’s iTunes, iPod powering broadcast ratings for ‘The Office’ – January 17, 2006