NBC Universal, the No. 1 supplier of digital video to Apple’s online iTunes Store has notified Apple that it has decided to not renew its contract to sell of television show downloads on iTunes. Supposedly NBC Universal wanted to have more control over how the television shows were sold to consumers. They evidently didn’t like how consumers had the option of paying $1.99 to download an episode. They wanted to force consumers into purchasing an entire season of a television show.
I’m a big fan of the iTunes $.99 music downloads and $1.99 television program downloads. I appreciate the ability to purchase only the media that I want. If I want to watch the first of Heroes, I shouldn’t have to purchase the entire season. That is what NBC Universal wants the power to do. They want to be able to force consumers into buying product they may not want.
What NBC Universal did is really quite laughable. This was free money for them. Apple was selling product that they had already used for programing on their television networks. They didn’t produce anything new for the iTunes Store. It was stuff that had already gone out over the air or through the cable. People were actually paying for media content that they themselves had been distributing for free. Leave it to NBC Universal to screw that up.
Greed is an awful thing. Now people who want to download digital episodes of The Office, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica will have to do it the old fashioned way - they will have to bittorrent it.
