“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.
think about this
There were iPods well before there was iTunes store. iTunes store could close tomorrow and iPods would still be just as popular.
Apple needs NBC more than NBC needs Apple…? I think not
lets not sell mobile content directly to 80% of the people who want to watch mobile content – simply brilliant.
@ Jaygee it’s called Manufacturer Suggested Retail Pricing … doesn’t mean that’s what it will sell for. Supply and Demand. What most vendors on Itunes are harping about is the relatively inelastic pricing scheme that Apple seems to have imposed on the Itunes store. I think it all balances out though in the long run