“Apple! NBC! At war! Sounds like heady stuff: Apple and NBC Universal brawling in the press over an iTunes’ contract to sell downloads of NBC TV shows,” Louis Hau writes for Forbes.
“But we’re having a hard time getting excited about this particular battle. In the end, it probably won’t make much difference in the media industry’s embryonic efforts to make money from online video, which are shifting to advertising-supported streaming video. In fact, the dispute may not even affect the long-term availability of NBC’s content on iTunes,” Hau writes.
“While TV networks have a vested interest in remaining on iTunes, the online store will likely end up being less important to them over time,” Hau writes. “Rather than focusing on selling downloads of their programming, the strategy being pursued by NBC, News Corp.’s Fox, CBS , Disney’s ABC and Viacom’s MTV and Comedy Central is increasingly emphasizing the sale of advertising to keep their content free.”
“No doubt Apple sees the writing on the wall, which is why we can probably expect the company to come up with new ways of getting iPod owners the content they want. One possibility: Apple has reportedly been in talks with film studios about starting a movie-rental service on iTunes,” Hau writes.
Full article here.
Huey Long: “Paradoxically, this made the French worker more productive – per man-hour – than a number of its neighbors and much more productive than American workers [and that gap is widening]”
Huh???? Do you enjoy demonstrating your complete & total ignorance so publicly?
Europe’s worker productivity lags well behind worker productivity here in the US… Hence why their economic growth rates, as a whole, lag behind the US and have for DECADES…..
Among the EU countries there are only a few exceptions to this economic growth pattern, namely Great Britain, Ireland, at times Sweden (and their worker productivity is still not as high)… But France?
Why do you think they have had this conservative political revolution in France? B/c they realize that investment dollars flow elsewhere in a global economy if their workforce isn’t as productive and efficient.
Why do you think that French entrepreneurs have moved across the channel to Great Britain? To ESCAPE all the work rules that don’t allow for flexibility in the workforce required for young, start-up companies! To ESCAPE onerous taxes that smother young companies..
If you want to pay 70% of your income to the government and let them control your life, then you can move to France… Me, I don’t want the government’s help… that’s not their job… I can take care of my own personal finances, thank you very much… That’s exactly why my ancestors left Europe in the first place….
“…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.”
Yes… and despite iTunes succes, I’d say that (from their actions) the CEOs of the music labels still haven’t learned anything and are trying to sail the same waters.
Self blinded and short-sighted morons whose overweaning dedication to the bottomline bllinds them to what the bottomline represents.
Satisfying one’s customers.
And that is the core issue behind the problems of entertainment industry for the past decade.
These people really cannot see the forest for the trees.
Points to consider:
1) Stronger DRM + ad’s is industry speak for NO FAST FORWARDING.
2) Apple makes nary a profit, as well they should, as the ITMS is simply a content pushing mechanism, nothing sexy.
3) NBC will eventually find that getting into the content pushing mechanism business, with stricter DRM, and foced ads will not “sell”, per se. I’d really like to see the money numbers NBC makes if I watch their show or not, per user, after all other costs are thrown in (paying for the show, broadcasting it, paying sales people to pimp it to advertisers, etc..) I have a feeling it is nowhere near $5/show/watcher, or $2/show/watcher for that matter.
And FWIW, can I sign something so that I will never be marketed to again? It doesn’t work, really, im on the north side of 40 and when I see an ad I dissect it to the base, ignorant, self-serving, pushy crap that it is within the first 5 seconds of the commercial. I can also pretty much tell how it will suck or break within 10 seconds. I really won’t buy something if you throw narrative, pictures and movies of it in front of me, really. I buy things on word of mouth, industry test results (e.g. consumer reports), and wheter or not Apple made it.
I stopped going to the movie theater because I couldn’t stand watching TV commercials before the movie began, which I still can’t believe the theater-going public has accepted. Talk about being screwed. In some areas of the country the going rate is nearly $10 for bending over. When the content providers see this, they figure they can give the public whatever, charge whatever, and they’ll be begging for more.
Well,This clearly only applies to shows that need to be paid for.
I’m downloading the 2 Sept edition of ‘Meet the Press’ as I write this as a pod cast.
Good public service on behalf of NBC. Keeping their news programs,probably keeps them on the right side of the FCC regs. But I have to say they don’t include adds unlike some of the other broadcasters that put pod cast their news.
@ Odyssey67,
So right you are, except Apple should make the TV with a Blu-Ray drive instead of a regular DVD drive…
To this day I don’t understand (except for maybe cost) why Apple did not include a drive on the TV from the beginning, but maybe this wake-up call will force their hand and then, I will buy my first AppleTV…
This makes no sense
If they got the pricing they wanted
$4.99 an episode x 20 episodes (average season) = $100
$1.99 (with adverts) x 20 = $40
DVD box set $30 – 60 which has no adverts
iTunes is not a TV channel – advertising has nothing to do with it. It is no different to buying a DVD set. If I purchased a DVD set which contained the adverts within each episode man would I be mad…
Anyone here who is in Advertising or Marketing do me a favor and kill yourselves…. just puting it out there … planting seeds….
..maybe it’s the style of advertising that is objectionable to most everyone. If content is going to be subsidized by advertisers then pertinent advertiser information should roll just like credits at the end or the beginning of content. Who would ever want to read a book again if every ten minutes you had to endure an audio-visual assault by a group of product-terrorists.
nomatte Your pricing explaination doesn’t make alot of sense. Following your logic, Apple would have been King during the 90s with their huge price tag, versus the percieved difference in quality from cheaper Windows boxes.
Same with Aston Martin, Lambourgini, BMW and other high end cars. Following your reasoning Ford, Chevy, Toyota and etc shouldn’t even exist.
Same with retail stores, Wal-Mart should be a non-entity, cause its prices are cheap, therefore quality crap. Their huge parking lots should be empty, so whay aren’t they?
Also, please explain why cheap 2nd run theaters are so popular.
Re: one price movie tickets
Well, regardless of seeing a chick flick, summer action blockbuster, comedy or what ever, if I had the option od seeing the movie for $8 or even $4 in a theatre with non-stadium seating, and a crappy sound system, or driving 20 minutes and paying $10 for stadium seating, and great sound, I’d take the drive and extra $2 any day. (real life movie going example)
Now, why do I have have to pay ANY money for a movie since in either theater I am forced to watch COMMERCIALS before preveiws? Why do I have to sit through non-skippable ads and previews when I buy a DVD? Simple answer, the NBC / studio apologists are wrong. The music and movie execs are just greedy. They want ad revenue, plus paid subscriptions, plus paid content, plus money if we even think about their content, or recommend it to someone else. Pure and simple GREED.
And another thing…
NBC wants flexibility in packaging shows together…. Thats really no different than the normal TV scheduling strategy today. Put a little known, lower rating, or even dog show right after a best seller in hopes that people won’t switch the channel. Well NBC and others, it won’t work. Viewers are smarter than that. When what we want to see ends, we turn off or switch the channel.
It will be the same if they could bundle crap episodes or movies with things we want to see, we won’t buy it. Of course NBC and newscourpse doesn’t care if we actually watch it or not, they just want us to pay out the extra $$$$ since we are getting something else with what we actually want. They hope we will see it as a bargin or value.
Has anyone noticed that more and more new release DVDs are being bundled with “sample sound tracks” or other movies on release day? SSDD, anything to get us to give them more money for what we don’t need or want.
This is yet another case of hurt feelings (and pocketbooks) by NBC/Universal. They are trying to continue the “days of rape” where consumers paid a 1000% markup REPEATEDLY for license to play their content. I’m glad my good ol’ cricket playing buddy Steve Jobs (I call him ‘Stevo’) told those Whineyversal teets where to go with their profit/price increase.
Video Productions Las Vegas
http://www.hiproductions.com
NBC Universal also asked Apple to “take concrete steps” to prevent privacy, the spokesman stated, “since it is estimated that the typical iPod contains a significant amount of illegally downloaded material.”
Actually NBCU seems pretty freaking serious about this piracy thing. I just learned they’ve petitioned the FCC to REQUIRE that ISPs “filter” internet traffic so copyrighted material can’t be transmitted.
Now before everyone thinks about how stupid this is and how it could be defeated yadda yadda yadda… think about the BIG picture. Government mandated filtering of internet traffic. Whatever the intentions that sounds a lot like: China. We need to dig deeper and talk more about our very special, must watch friends at NBCU.
I wish I were making this up.
Me I would give up my free speech and free internet to feed my kid. End of list. I can live just fine without movies and tv.
MW: “problem” Yep I’d say so.
How cares about TV. I just hope that a movie rental service is around the corner.