Damn. Apple just gave NBC walking papers. NBC declined to continue their contract and Apple basically said cyabye. That’s some serious hard ball. I guess I’ll have to torrent my Heroes from now on.
“We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes. “We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”
Apple Slaps Back, Gives NBC the Preemptive Boot From iTunes [Giz]
From an article I saw, NBC was asking for $4.99 per episode - which if true, is ridiculous. In any case, hopefully it will prompt some better competition. But you can get Heroes (streamed) for free off of NBC’s site.
John,
This is becoming quite a catfight. NBC now says that they did to explore alternative biz models. This is a growing trend among media entities. I am sure more content producers will go down this route. Apple does have a monopolistic position in the online media commerce, which is not conducive to these media entities.
Read more of my thoughts here:
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/2007/09/02/growing-ihate-for-itunes/