“NBC Universal would like to have its TV shows distributed once again through Apple’s iTunes service, a top executive said Wednesday, but he called for antipiracy measures to help protect his business’ revenue,” Stephen Shankland reports for CNET.
MacDailyNews Take: When will these people learn? DRM doesn’t work. Pirates will always pirate, regardless of whatever antipiracy measures are used. Just get the content available in a timely fashion, in good quality for a reasonable price and you’ll make money.
Shankland continues, “George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC Universal, didn’t specifically mention Apple by name in his request, but it was clear he had the iPod maker in mind when it came to combating people’s consumption of pirated content.”
Shankland reports, “‘If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gatekeeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some antipiracy measures,’ Kliavkoff said in an onstage interview at the Ad:Tech conference here. One of the big issues for NBC is piracy. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Dummy doesn’t get it.
Shankland continues, “In 2007, NBC Universal pulled its TV content from iTunes when the two companies disagreed about pricing. Kliavkoff made it clear that he’d like the conduit back, though. ‘We’d love to be on iTunes. It has a great customer experience. We’d love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes,’ he said, but wouldn’t comment on any negotiations. ‘We have film distribution with iTunes so yes, we do talk to Apple,’ he said.”
“Price appears still to be a sticking point,” Shankland reports.
MacDailyNews Take: So, now we finally get to the heart of the matter.
Shankland continues, “‘The music industry guys would have something to say about how the pricing has affected their product over the last few years,’ Kliavkoff said.
MacDailyNews Take: The music industry is not negatively affected by Apple’s pricing. They are negatively affected because consumers can now choose and are no longer forced to buy bundles (albums on CD) at exorbitant prices. Tough. Don’t blame Apple because technology allowed for consumer choice. Last we looked, Apple sells the music labels’ product and gives them the bulk of the money. Again: DRM doesn’t work. Pirates will always pirate, regardless of whatever antipiracy measures are used. Just get the content available in a timely fashion, in good quality for a reasonable price and you’ll make money.
Shankland continues, “The Apple-NBC Universal spat has been a game of brinksmanship over which company needs the other more. Analysts at Forrester Research think Apple needs the content more than NBC needs the distribution.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “NeverFade” for the heads up.]
The analysts at Forrester Research or anywhere else who think that Apple needs the content more than NBC needs the distribution are idiots. Here’s why.
Jobs will let NBC back when NBC does as they are told by those who built, own, and operate the market-dominating iTunes Store.
@ Chaz
I still think NBC should sell their content at the price they want.
Pricing, DRM, and all the various permutations on one side of the equation, simplicity on the other.
It’s a tough balancing act to make all the variables work for everyone. The most important (in my opinion) is to keep the customer happy, and don’t confuse with too much complexity.
It’s the KISS princiiple – it’s why we see one-click buying, standard pricing, and so on.
The risk of too many permutations is customer fatigue..
Apple’s right to insist on the less complex model.
The content suppliers are still making a truck load of money… it’s just greed that drives the truck even faster!
Um, MCCFR, NBC’s sat feed is scrambled and has been for about 20 years when Telco distribution was eliminated and C band was dropped for KU Sat Distribution. Demon has it right. NBC wanted to bundle crap. Demon is also right in that quicktime supports disabled FF/REW at the producer’s discretion, so ad-supported shows through iTunes is here and now. NBC should wake up before it’s too late. And if I was a cable company, I’d be planning an exit strategy for the cable business. Maybe a Comcastic/Yahoo/MS/Dell uber merger will save their bacon.
Hulu works nicely and through the miracle of ad block + in firefox I do not get the commercials either.
Yep, hulu has a flaw-adblock stops there commercials from showing.
“Dubya eeeeeeeen Bee Cee”
Poor deluded “Think about it”…
I haven’t watched a thing from NBC since they declared war on me, the consumer.
Sooooo… you can’t really be so blinded by the holy NBC logo that you think that Apple needs NBC more than NBC needs Apple? Put down the NBC rapped joint and listen up, stoner!
Once again, “Think about it”
I have not watched a thing from NBC since they declared war on me, the consumer.
I do, however, continue to this very day to buy content from iTunes, so I’d say NBC needs Apple a LOT more than the flipside.
Whahahahahah! They are ready to come crawling back!
I guess they’re tired of giving away their product for free on Bit Torrent networks.
When NBC was on iTunes I subscribed and bought a season pass to two shows…when they went off, I stopped watching them. I don’t own a TV. If it ain’t on iTunes, it doesn’t exist….
The Beatles is a really good example…in a few years…who cares who they were…..I’d pick up a special addition Yellow Sub iPhone if they did one….ha…that is coming next…limited ed iPhones….
What NBC is looking for is not more DRM on the content you buy from the iTunes store, They are looking for Apple to police everything that passes through iTunes, so if you have a Movie you have purchased and ripped, they want Apple to stop you from putting it on your iPod. Apple knows the day they do that is the day that iTunes stops being the Number 1 distribution channel for digital content and shortly there after seises to exist.
JAYGEE,
Ah, young Padawan.
NBC does, indeed, have the right to price their content as NBC sees fit.
NBC does NOT, however, have the RIGHT to sell their content on iTunes.
iTunes is the property of Apple, and if NBC wishes to sell content using Apple’s outlet, then Apple does indeed have a say in the pricing.
If NBC does not like Apple’s answer, then NBC is free to try and make it somewhere else.
The very idea that NBC is coming back to the table suggests that their icicles weren’t fairing too well in Hell.
You people who are promoting the idea of streaming video and commercials just don’t get it. People do not want to watch skippy, poor quality video that they have to watch in one sitting. People are sick of paying for cable and satellite TV and still getting commercials and censored programming.
Streaming video is not the answer to anti-piracy either. You are VERY naive if you believe so. There are already tools out there to convert streaming video to video files. The bottom line is that once it gets to the home computer, it can be duplicated.
George…
If what you say is true (and I have no reason to believe it isn’t), something is porous in the networks’ distribution mechanism because some episodes of shows are turning up as BitTorrents prior to broadcast.
Bundling tv shows, one good with one bad, reminds me of something in another industry….hmmmm… what could it be?
Could it be an “album”? In the music industry, they bundle a couple good songs with about 10 bad ones, and call it an album. On a 45, they bundle an A-side track with a throwaway B-side.
On principal, Apple should be opposed to NBC’s bundling, aka album, concept.
MCCFR: Post production facilities have had late night tape dubbers copy and post them (the main way a title is available without network logo), but facilities are clamping down and several employees have been sentenced to prison. The networks are also switching to IP-based storage, so rather than numerous tape copies floating around, it’s beginning to be all very securely managed. A company I used to work for handles asset storage and internet encoding for big sites and studios and they have gone 100% tapeless, both for efficiency and security.FInally, local affiliates used to get pre-feeds late at night, but that’s been phased out since 24 hour programming. All networks sat feeds are scrambled. The best you can do is find a unprotected back-haul (remote location to network) for a live show or live news report, but most of them are sent now via fiber.
What NBC wants is for the iTunes player software to pick out pirated material and block it from playing. Apple has no interest in being the gatekeeper. As it is, most pirated material is in formats (divx, avi) that iTunes doesn’t even play.
If NBC wants to go after a gatekeeper, they should be going after the VLC player.
MDN’s attitude of “pirates will always pirate, so why fight them?” is terrible. If you don’t fight piracy, whether it’s TV shows, music, or treasure on Spanish ships in the Caribbean, the pirates will multiply like rabbits.
DRM may not be the answer, but the content providers have a point that they do lose money because of piracy, and it also costs them money to use anti-piracy technologies. It will always be a cat-and-mouse game, but you can’t let pirates get away with stealing or it will become the norm rather than the exception.
By the way NBC, if I buy a CD and rip it to iTunes and my iPhone, I’m not stealing – I’m just using my legally purchased material in another medium. I can’t listen to my CD and iPhone at the same time. Now if I rip my CD to iTunes and then give the CD to a friend, now I’m a pirate because my friend didn’t pay for the CD.
No problem with that, just don’t call me a thief for using what I legally purchased. I’m not buying it twice.
Tell NBC to go F&^K themselves.
Simple.
@ Tommyr
You mean to go “Frack” themselves.
If it were not for The Office, I wouldn’t watch NBC at all.
All I can think of is that scene from Die Hard, where John McClain says, “Welcome to the party!”
Jobs: hi Jeff (Zucker), hows it hanging? I hear your guys want to resume selling your TV shows on iTunes.
Zucker: Um, yeah, Steve, but there still remains that DRM matter and the variable pricing / bundling matter my peeps say we need…
Jobs: Siooma, Jeff. You walked. Now look at your market share. Bad move, boyo. Go grow your own digital distribution network, bokay? What was that? Hulu what? Um, that’s great, Jeff. Let your viewers stay before their laptops squinting at grainy small windowed versions of your crapass shows. We’re going places and you’re not a passenger. Unless…
As Anthony Hopkins said in A Bridge Too Far…
Tell them to go to hell.
Hello…
NBC is just giving the appearance that they had a reason to pull out to begin with…If they just came back, they’d look like complete losers.
I purchased several season’s worth of NBC shows prior to their withdrawal from iTunes. Since then, I’ve lost interest on those shows, and will be slow to return to my prior TV viewing habits.
NBC: you shot yourselves in your greedy, corporate feet!
What we all are missing is NBC requesting an anti-piracy measure embedded in iTunes preventing putting any content not paid for on your iPod.