NBC & Apple Break Up

NBC announced the other day that they’ve decided to not renew their ongoing contract with Apple, which means all of the NBC sitcoms and dramas will no longer be available for purchase. This is all due to the fact that they were unable to come to a reasonable agreement, similar to what happened with Universal a few months back. Given that, it’s easy to think that Apple must be the cause, but no, not at all. Here’s what was given as the reason in the official release out of Apple:

“The move follows NBC’s decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99.”

Not much of a surprise though. Just look at the hassles that NBC has caused other companies in the past, including YouTube. Seriously. Who in the heck is running this network? Them pulling out of Apple means one thing… more piracy, less revenue. Not difficult to do the math.

“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.”

Source: Apple.com