NBC pulls out of iTunes
Didn’t see that one coming, now did we? NBC Universal has made the dangerous decision to not renew their current contract with the iTunes store, effectively pulling all of their television content from the grand daddy of content providers. Apple has issued a press release stating that NBC wanted to raise the price of TV shows from $1.99 to $4.99/per episode. Instead of Apple then pulling NBC TV shows mid-season in December, when their licensing deal ran out, Apple has decided to pull the plug now. NBC is said to have been focusing resources on launching their own site, which will supposedly let them increase revenue over iTunes sales, because NBC will have advertisers on their site. Anyone else with us in thinking that NBC should have never dropped out?
The packages had been part of the story from the begining it just kind of got pushed to the rear of the $4.99 story.
NBC was planning on taking something that I wanted, adding something I don’t want, charging me $4.99 or what ever and acting like they were going to be doing me a favor by doing it.
That was what I found funniest about NBC’s press response to apple. There was the obvious spin in their favor but short of saying it wasn’t $4.99 it was pretty much what we had heard anyway.
We’ll see what happens. If they just go to Hulu and try the over priced packages approach there I think they may be coming back.