Mr. Zucker has sounded off.
You just knew it was about money. You know, NBC wanting to raise prices and
Jobs telling them to go screw. It is a very well known fact that most of the time these relationships between the content provider and Apple always come to blows over what Steve won't let them charge.
The content provider wanting to raise prices and Jobs holding the line. You can argue the point that it is the right of the content provider to set the price for their product, but I agree with Jobs when he says that .99 is the limit.
Well, according to Jeff Zucker, chief asshat of NBC Universal in an interview with Variety he pulled the NBC U content over money;
“We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99,” he said. “We made that offer for months and they said no.”
How much is one episode of a TV show from the 3rd rated broadcast network worth? Jobs hit the nail on the head when he stated that TV shows on iTunes were over priced. If .99 will get me a song on iTunes then .99 should get me a low resolution TV show as well. At $3 a pop over the course of an entire TV season you could buy the DVD box set of Heroes and get a lot more content.
Executives from FOX have said the exact same thing. That they should be the one to set the price for their content, not Apple. Psst, hey dipshits; the consumer will set the price for your content. If you raise it above the point that consumers will spend you won't sell any content.
The proof already exists. iTunes has sold well over 3 billion songs on iTunes yet sales of TV shows lag well behind that pace in the low 10's of millions. Why is that? Could it be that people (just like me) think that $1.99 for a TV show episode is too much? Me thinks that it is. You couldn't convince these clowns of that. To them their 3rd and 4th rated network shows are worth MORE. Right.
Here's another priceless quote from Mr. Asshat;
“Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”
They didn't want to share in revenue from hardware sales? And Zucker thinks that there is something wrong with that? Apple sold $15,000,000 worth of NBC programming, but sold BILLIONS of dollars worth of hardware. I suppose that Mr. Asshat thinks that NBC deserves a cut every time Vizio or Sony sell a TV or every time Tivo sells a box. Or how about a percentage of the fee that I pay DirecTV every month.
A little over 7 million episodes sold should be worth what? A kick to the curb? Oh wait, that's exactly what they got.
Fox and NBC think that they have a better model and have started Hulu.com to serve up the content from their 3rd and 4th rated networks. Good on them. On their own site they will be able to do whatever it is that they like with their content. My bet is that just like when the shows air on TV most people will be watching something on another website (network).
