Comments on: Apple drops NBC after NBC drops Apple

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 06:20:40 +0000

I’m in the US military stationed overseas. Downloading Heroes and The Office from iTunes, was the only way that the thousands of deployed service members actually watched the show, as the Armed Forces Network plays the season nearly a year after it originally airs. This is really unfortunate, but I will definitely turn to piracy to get these shows now. Thanks for nothing, NBC.

By: N/A

N/A — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 21:47:44 +0000

if consumers == pissed then NBC == pwned. Idiots, digital technology is changing so society, as stated earlier you had a chance to make a little money now I pray that you bastards are victimized by piracy.

By: mipple

mipple — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:31:23 +0000

Gary,

NBC will just cancel the show if advertisers pull out. Many of their shows are on thin ice already. If you hadn’t noticed they’re already ranked last and people watching their shows on iTunes really doesn’t help. “Were dead last in ratings but fans watch on iTunes instead of TV” doesn’t sound like much of a selling point when approaching advertisers. Most probably, the new NBC web delivery will incorporate advertising to an extent that Apple won’t allow.

By: Steve K.

Steve K. — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:16:23 +0000

> I figure if a movie is $7.00 for 2 hours, that equates to
> roughly 17 minutes per $1.00 spent. Since most TV
> shows are between 23 – 45 minutes (30 – 60 minutes
> minus commercials.) this means I should pay $1.35
> to $2.64 for a show so Iâ€™m OK with $1.99 per episode.

This is the most asinine, idiotic and ridiculous thing I have ever heard.

By: leo

leo — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:06:39 +0000

Move on, Linux Mythtv and record free

By: rodney

rodney — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 15:57:57 +0000

well I guess it is about time to fire up bittorrent again. This whole thing is ridiculous, i was perfectly fine with paying since i had the ease of itunes.

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:46:30 +0000

Tim,

Good idea, but watch a few hours TV, find out which advertisements you see the most during that time frame, and write to them expressing disinterest in NBC. If the advertising money falls NBC will be begging to come back.

By: Gary

Gary — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:42:22 +0000

Maxxed,

We may or may not be being Naive here. I got hooked on Psych because it was offered as a free download on iTunes. I highly doubt that 1% figure. Out of the 5 people I know that have video iPods, 4 use video.

NBC loses here, they will get extremely bad press and accusations of price gauging right before the new TV series starts. Even people who don’t use iPods will hear tales of corporate greed, and a few may decline to watch the new shows on principle or enough people will bicker and advertisers will start to pull away.

iTunes gets MILLIONS of visitors every day. I don’t see how you can say that Apple sucks for distribution. There’s no cost associated for NBC once the shows are ripped to digital and hosted on APPLE’s servers. When you watch the free episodes on NBC.com NBC has to pay for bandwidth charges. When you download from Apple you pay $1.99 with Apple footing the bill for bandwidth and a portion going to NBC.

I could see NBC’s point of view if there was a direct correlation between loss of DVD box sets and iTunes, but I have yet to see a single study on that.

By: Kindnation

Kindnation — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 04:32:12 +0000

In the age of the Internet, NBC forgets that they are just a content provider. They should be distributing their content to as many people as possible with at the lowest price possible so that it doesn’t hamper the viral marketing if your content is worth its bandwidth. The point is, you want the most mindshare, so you have leverage to negotiate ad rates with advertisers.

To the consumer, $2 is negligible for the convenience of not having to do the video conversion to put it on your iPod. When you start charging $5, it no longer becomes a compulsive buy, and you have affectively killed your primary business model. To disseminate your content to the most people possible, and ultimately you will lose viewership and subsequently, ad revenue.

If the broadcast networks realized how stupid they are in their mindset of “PIRACY” of Intellectual Property instead of realizing the Internet is the world’s most affective free marketing machine humanity has ever known, they might actually start posting all their content for free on Youtube et. al., and let people embed links, talk about it on their blogs, etc to get the most mindshare possible.

It takes a real idiot to think that you get more revenue by more than doubling the price and put in an extra $3 in your pocket without realizing you affectively killed the distribution of the content.

By: Rob

Rob — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:41:50 +0000

Whatever, You can get it all free using this great little App called TV Shows. You can find it on Versiontracker.