Friday, August 31, 2007

No more NBC shows on iTunes

Open letter from ilounge to NBC.

So apparently NBC has decided that it wants more money out of the iTunes downloads. Apple said no. NBC is now taking their ball and going home. Now who is going to lose out here? Apple? I doubt it. NBC? They will lose the revenue from the episode purchases. The consumer? Ah...yeah...this sucks. I'm in my senior year of college. I have a life. I'm not going to structure my days around being able to watch Heroes, The Office, and Battlestar Galactica. Heroes was (and probably will be) on Monday nights. I've got better things to do with my evening than watch TV. Same deal for The Office. Battlestar Galactica is on Friday nights (you'd better believe I have better things to do with my Fridays than watch TV)...and I don't have the Sci-Fi channel. Unfortunately for me those are my three favorite shows. According to Apple NBC was asking for a price increase that would have resulted in a $4.99 per episode price and Apple wouldn't agree to it. I really don't think this is going to hurt Apple too much. It's been pretty well established by now that Apple doesn't make much on each download. They make about enough to cover the costs of providing the service. I don't like downloading files off of filesharing networks or bittorrent, I prefer to buy them from iTunes. But it looks like NBC is forcing me to download their shows illegally if I want to watch them.

Boy are these guys clueless.