NBC Universal Drops iTunes 691
An anonymous reader writes "NBC Universal has cancelled its iTunes contract and will withdraw the television shows it currently offers through the service in December, when the current contract expires. This is a huge blow for the service, as NBC is the controlling interest in Apple customer-friendly intellectual properties like The Office, Battlestar Galactica, My Name is Earl and Heroes. From the article: 'The decision to withdraw the content follows disagreements between the two firms. Apple is thought to have rejected NBC's demands for more restrictive DRM and the introduction of flexible pricing. Apple was informed of NBC Universal's decision late last night. The report states that neither Apple nor NBC Universal would comment on the matter, but said they continue to talk, "free of acrimony".'" Hey NBC: I have chosen not to have cable, but want to pay you for Heroes. Guess what my only alternative will be if you pull it from iTunes?
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:2, Interesting)
In other news man who can not watch a TV show does NOT die of cancer.....
Existing purchases... (Score:2, Interesting)
don't worry - you will have your chance to PAY (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the rest of the NBC lineup?
Universal are smart and this is all they could do. (Score:5, Interesting)
Universal are in a losing situation by having their content in only one marketplace.
As much as I love Apple and their ethics, it was overdue. The only way that Universal can lose is if they fail to market the new service they have selling the content.
OP is a bit naive thinking he won't be able to buy Universal content any more!!
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
By the way, do you know Zonk personally, that you're in a position to call him a liar? Or are you just being a knee-jerk stuffed shirt DRM apologist and going on the attack?
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:0, Interesting)
Re:Universal are smart and this is all they could (Score:1, Interesting)
The above statement makes sense, until you realize that the one marketplace for their content is the most popular marketplace for content by an extremely large margin. When that single market is the largest, the rules change. For example, an awful lot of fortunes have been made in software by companies that "limited" themselves by developing only for Windows.
These greedy-ass media companies just can't leave well-enough alone. By pulling stuff from iTunes they're only hurting themselves. What are they gonna do, adopt Windows DRM and put it on another, less-popular store that will just close up a year later when Microsoft's media strategy changes direction again? Other online music/movie stores come and go, but iTunes remains the rock in a turbulent sea.
Does This Make Apple The Hero? (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally don't want to resort to means of dubious legality to watch the shows I like, so I simply won't be watching if seeing what I want becomes an unpalatable experience. I remember a number of years ago having a problem with my cable service, but once I threatened to cancel the service altogether, they quickly came around and fixed the problem. I suppose NBC Universal will have to learn this the hard way.
Re:The option everyone's forgetting (Score:3, Interesting)
This is wrong. NBC gets essentially 100% of their money from advertisers. Broadcasting stuff for free over the airwaves simply does not spontaneously generate money.
NBC attempts to make shows that people want to watch for pride/personal reasons, and by having popular shows, they can then charge extra for advertising on those shows.
I would assume that the iTunes downloads don't have these ads, and even if 2 million mild manored geeks pay for and download the thing, its simply a waste of time for NBC to even think about.
Here is a listing of the cost per 30 second slot on TV: http://www.frankwbaker.com/2005-2006_ad_rates.htm [frankwbaker.com]
At $1.99/download, even if every penny went to NBC, its still not worth the effort. This is compounded when you consider syndication, which downloads pretty much circumvent altogether.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact our society is becoming more and more fascist. Everybody breaks laws all the time, it simply cannot be avoided. Having citizens always subject to arrest for some reason or other is one of the tools of a fascist regime.
This country would be a much sadder place if everybody who found laws offensive just sucked it up. From the founding fathers to slavery, prohibition, equal rights - I feel I owe a debt of gratitude to countless people courageous enough to break unfair laws.
I don't mean to glamorize copyright battles by comparing them to obviously greater things, but I guess now that our basic rights have been established (not that we can be complacent, fascism is not far away) we can shift our fights to luxuries.
You can obey our media overlords and bought-and-sold legislature all you want, but please don't claim a moral high ground over someone who does not.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to assume here that you didn't move to, or remain in, Alaska because of the excellent quality of the communications services, so I have to wonder why it is that you're so pissed off about this. I can think of any number of advantages to living in Alaska that make good TV service pale in comparison, and I'm sure if you put your mind to it, that you can, too.
But seriously, you're going to turn to copyright infringement just because you have difficulty obtaining television content? You're going to break civil laws just because you're pissed off that you can't spend money on a faceless corporation who is under no obligation to provide *you* with entertainment? Your priorities seem at little strange to me.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, if I pay for something, I expect to own it and I expect that it will do whatever I tell it to do within its functionality range. Any product which is artificially limited only draws my ire. Why the fuck can't I fast-forward a DVD the same way I could a VHS? That's bullshit. Well, fuck 'em. Here's the equation:
free+anytime+anywhere+howiwant+immoral > $$$+whentheysay+wheretheysay+howtheysay+moral
They can't just fall back on saying
immoral < moral
and expect me to give up the other four criteria, which are the four dominant criteria.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
In your reply to someone who advocated simply ignoring unjust laws you saidYou then proceed to compare these ideas to a child molesters.This certainly seems like you are placing yourself on a pedestal and judging his opinion.
I'm a big fan of advocating change and I do so about things that I feel strongly about. However, our political system and climate are imperfect and we all must live in the present. I think principled disobedience of laws is a valid form of protest, and is perhaps even beneficial to the larger cause. If everyone obeyed media companies every whim things would be much worse for us now.
The only reason we have things like iTunes and DRM-free legal downloads is because piracy is so rampant. The media companies did not want to give us these things and would not have done so of their own free will. I suspect the MPAA learned from the RIAA's experience with piracy and has done a much better job. Within a few years of computer/bandwidth becoming cheap to distribute movies we already have numerous legal (and some free) sources of downloadable video. Without the threat of cheap and ubiquitous piracy the MPAA would certainly have preferred to keep to their comfortable and profitable theatrical release/dvd
We should all thank pirates for giving us these things. Without these noble creatures we would have no legal downloads, no price constraints, no motivation for developing new distribution models. They are truly advancing the ideal of a more just copyright climate by risking financial ruin for demonstrable gains, while more timid souls impotently write letters and vote libertarian.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:3, Interesting)
As i re-read that, I guess I still come off as taking the moral high ground.. oh well, fuck it. Someone has to play that part, I guess I'll just accept it. But I'm really not a dick, i swear.
MSFT is the mastermind of this move and others (Score:2, Interesting)
They do not want any media that uses industry standard AVC as a codec to succeed because the cannot sell encoder licenses for media creation software or influence media content creators to use their OS and related technologies.
If Paramount is next to withdraw from iTunes (even if they are making a lot of money), I would suggest investigating whether MSFT paid them off like they may have indirectly to support HD DVD exclusively.
Re:Your only alternative? (Score:2, Interesting)
If you want to watch it on your iPod of Apple TV, the only alternative is to simply record it yourself or if you don't get good reception, grab it from... some other source. The point is of course, that trying to charge more per episode than it should cost, and withdrawing from a major distribution source is more than enough reason for people to obtain illegal copies. Which is highly ironic, given that NBC has been quoting that most iPods are mostly filled with illegal content. Which I think is a falsehood and insulting. My iPod is filled with music I've collected over years and with podcasts and videos I've downloaded from iTunes. Illegal? Nice try. They want Apple to pay for being successful on "their backs", like the cable companies wanting to charge Google. iTunes exists alongside all the other avenues, not instead of. iTunes won't stop someone from buying the DVD. It stops people from abandoning shows with no time to watch them. NBC wants to confuse customers and spin them around to see if they can shake more money out.
"Heroes, yes... that's $4.99 per episode, but if you act now, you can by Heroes for $1.99 if you buy three episodes of My Name is Earl!" Dude, no. I just want Heroes. "Then, go to our website." What? No, I just want it on my iPhone. "I can't help you sorry." I guess I'll help myself. "What was that?" I said, I guess I'll record your sure with my EyeTV and use by USB transcoder to put it on my iPhone automatically. I didn't want to have to do it this way. "What! No, you need to pay us for that!" Then sell it to me on iTunes, bitch! "Sniff. But we don't wanna! iTunes forces us to simply provide desireable content. That sucks! We really need to confuse people!"