“Here’s the latest advice from Silicon Valley to Hollywood: Don’t cheat on Steve Jobs and then ask him to split the proceeds from the video,” John Shinal reports for MarketWatch.
“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
Apple will announce Sept. 5th that it is starting it’s own media corporation to complete against foes such as NBC Universal.
Will the new NBC site put their TV downloads in a format I can play on my iPod, the most popular device to watch such shows?
Will I remember that NBC shows exit to be downloaded? I go to the iTunes Store for music (like so many others)… guess I won’t be seeing any promotions for NBC TV shows. Out of site, out of mind especially for new NBC shows
Who was the the NBC Brainiac who thought up this business plan?
These executives are really greedy and they probably don’t use the technology.
They believe in error that raising the price or raising the price by making you buy a combo package you don’t really want – the consumer will blindly pay whatever they the studio’s are demanding.
Most likely the Hulu site will not allow any downloads and will keep it tied to the PC.
If they charge an outrageous price (one because they want money and two because they have so many partners) no one will buy with all the restrictions. In fact I can see it being available for the M$ Zune, since M$ is a partner.
Everyone will either download from other sources or rip from broadcasts using Tivo or EyeTV, etc. and download into iTunes.
All they have accomplished is to piss-off the viewer, make it harder to view on the iPod and not get any income at all.
Idiots these Studios and Recording Companies are.
Hula = Moola = NBC is out to screw ya …
This makes it a convenient time to boycott since the sound is broken on my TV anyway.
MW: “poor”
As in: I’m too poor to buy NBC episodes anyway.
So basically the dead last network is pulling out of a rare venue where it was actually a leader. So it can give its content away for free (with commercials) on a barely named site sometime in the future.
The thing is… there is more tv content available than ever before. While what is “good” is a personal choice, for most of us there’s sooooo much more of it available than there’s time for. I think NBC is still living in the 3-channel era.
This is such an incredible miscalculation by NBC.
iTunes tv pricing is already the most expensive way to buy shows (the others being DVDs and… mutiple avenues of FREE.) BUT SJ had that consumer product knack to see that $1.99 is impulse money and close enough to free that some will pay for it. Close enough to free… but in volume real money (especially since Apple doesn’t keep huge amounts for itself).
Moreover with a bazillion channels and dozens of download sites emerging they just bozoed themselves out of the best shelf space in cyberspace.
They may not like that Apple is becoming powerful. Welcome to the world. It is full of people and entities having more power than we’d like them to. Apple isn’t going away… it’ll just be promoting ABC and Fox for those shiny new video ipods. Way to build an audience NBC. Wish you weren’t part of a behemoth so I could short your stock.
So the Mall tells the vendors how much they can sell their goods for? I don’t get it.
Let NBC sell their stuff at whatever they want, take a %, so what?
What Apple should do – what they should have done from the beginning – is make AppleTV WITH A DVR. And a DVD player. what better way to put the fear of the Almighty Dollar into these idiots?
Personally, I hope this is a wake up call for Steve Jobs. He really needs to stop pretending that this situation is ever going to get better. He’s been pinning a large share of the company’s future on remaking the success of the iPod/audio paradigm in video, and it just ain’t going to happen the way he’s been playing it. The hollywood studios are just too paranoid of Apple’s success – and power – at the expense of the record companies. It doesn’t matter that he’s practically saved the music industry from financial oblivion (or at least delayed it). The CEOs of these video/movie companies would rather have the ship they sail hit the shoals than give up that kind of control to one man/one company – even if it is in their shareholder’s best interests.
Jobs has been pussy-footing around this fact for too long. As a studio exec himself, he’s been ‘self-indentifying’ with them way too much. What’s good for Apple should be his focus. And what’s best for his Apple customers – not for his country-club cohorts – is what’s good for his company.
I’ve said it countless times before here, and I’m going to say it again: The iPod/iTunes system works BECAUSE the system allows you to record and/or rip your own audio and do what you want with it. The record companies don’t dare leave iTunes now because they know that people will have absolutely no incentive to buy from them otherwise – the hardware and technology Apple provides makes it easy to make them irrelevant if they try to gouge their customers.
The same thing – and ONLY the same thing – will work with video. Only when companies like NBC/Universal come to fear an AppleTV DVR, with all the software polish that only Apple can bring to bear, as well as a built in DVD player that makes ripping a snap (even if Apple doesn’t provide the software for that themselves), will they begin to negotiate with Jobs in good faith. They will do so for the same reason the record companies do now; to do otherwise is to accelerate the coming of the day when they can’t make money on selling movies or TV shows any longer.
C’mon Jobs. What more is it gonna take? How much more do you need to see? Leave the DRM shit behind. Don’t screw us over like that. Forget about tying your customers to iTunes first & foremost. If you give them the easiest way ever seen, to record their own pre-owned or already freely obtained content, then – just as with audio & the iPod – everything ‘video’ will fall into place.
All you have to do is JUST DO IT
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool mad” style=”border:0;” />
I purchased the episodes of Heroes, but have, since yeasterday, notified NBC, that I will no longer purchase any of their programs, and will not utilize their site, nor their business. I paid over 1200.00 to give my son a weekend pass to Universal Hollywood (Sheraton Suite included) and will no longer sponsor any ventures into theis venues. I also have frequented the Universal for concerts many times. no more. As for GE, I already have a bad vibe for them and their greed. Universal/NBC just added themselves to my list. Greed really torques me. Excessive grees just plain pisses me off.
slams the door? Clips the peacock’s feathers? Ask yourself what NBC really has up their sleeves. Something is up.
“10% of something is always better than 50% of fsck all”
Except that currently for universal, Video downloads= fsck all revenue. So it’s 10% of fsck all or 50% of fsck all both of which are still less then fsck all.
It’s about who’s in the driver’s seat for the next steps in downloadable media. Hint: Just like PCs, Apple has pioneered market but will end up one of many, not the biggest player.