Also this will allow alternative business models and may make content cheaper for us consumers.

Read more of my thoughts here:
http://abhishek.tiwari.com/200.....or-itunes/

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Few weeks ago, I reported about Universal severing its ties with Apple. Universal had disagreements with Apple around the pricing structure, which led to refusal…

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Kevin Wick has been kind enough to look up the contact information for the NBC Executives that are key to getting this situation reversed.

Amy Zelvin, NBC Universal Digital Media Communications, (212) 664-7436 amy.zelvin@nbcuni.com
Joe Libonati, NBC Universal Television Group Publicity, (818) 840-3050 joe.libonati@nbcuni.com

(edit) Some additions-

Jeff Zucker, President and Chief Executive Officer, NBC Universal (212) 664-4444 jeff.zucker@nbcuni.com
Ben Silverman, Co-Chairman, NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio ben.silverman@nbcuni.com

Now, please don’t call these people and threaten them, cuss them, or yell at them. That’s not going to get anything accomplished.

If, however, you want to politely let them know how you feel about their suggested price increase, and subsequent removal from iTunes, it might actually have some affect.

If enough people call, NBC just might listen…you never know.

I was noticing the EXACT same thing. It’s scary that so many people just seem to assume that unless it’s on Itunes, they’re fully justified in stealing it. People whine about the possibility of having to sync their music/video library with multiple platforms. Meanwhile these same people juggle 38 social networks, multiple IM/email accounts, etc. without batting an eye.

DRM is of course what makes this all so difficult. A lot of people are just more than happy to leverage themselves neck deep in Apple’s DRM that they don’t care to think about other alternatives. More competition for Itunes would help open up some of the DRM barriers making it easier to get a wider range of content from a wider range of sources.

It’s far far easier for me to click on a button to watch an episode of something than to find the right box on the shelf, and swap discs when I want to watch the next bit of the season or whatever.

Granted, I could rip DVDs to my computer, but It’s terribly time consuming and I really can’t be bothered.

As for you, wlrock, that’s a great idea. Start a business by calling your potential customers evil thieves. Good business plan. In order to seal it, threaten to more than double the price of the shows the audience wants to see, while giving them a discount, no doubt, on the first season of “Two and a Half Men.”

This seems to be a popular attitude among iTunes users. Now I see why Universal and NBC are seeking greener pastures. You can talk all day about “unfair” distribution of original content, but resorting to illegal activities when there will be perfectly legal ways to do it is simply childish.

This is one more reason to ensure the removal of proprietary DRM on Apple and MS products, while opening up content to any device a person chooses to use. Although the numbers are large, keep in mind that not everyone is an iPod/iTunes user and we need more competition to keep things open.

“iTunes - get it here or steal it!”

I can’t wait to see these clowns (no pun intended) coming back to Apple in a year or two and begging to get back in to a store with 200 million customers all over the world. Dream on if you think I am going to sync my iphone or ipod with 5 stores for content.

I am personally boycotting all content from Universal and NBC for doing these moves out of greed and not taking into account the customer experience.

I happen to think that Apple is right in wanting to keep prices reasonable, low and simple.

There you go. So, who’s zooming who?

Yeah, it’s official. The announcement is now on Apple’s site.

“Pricing differences” seems to merely be the excluse to support a change in business strategy — i.e. new property to support that is ad supported. Ad supported is the traditional TV model — one they are very comfortable with and whose costs/structure they know well. The reason for the partnership on Hulu is traditional media companies suck at internet ventures and have lost tons of money — trying to containerize/share the infrastructure expense and dodge the political bullet if it blows up (again) seem to be the reasons for Hulu.

They see the $ going to be made by Google/YouTube and likely want to run both new online only campaigns but also very likely seeking highly profitable cross over campaigns whose sales include both TV & internet.

The real question is why can’t they continue to do both online streaming NBC.com(or Hulu) and iTunes download? Because they feel they must do this to help Hulu succeed. Plus anything to spite Apple as the networks feel like they are losing their control and they know they can’t beat Apple this round but want to hurt it if they can until there is other viable competition (Video on Demand Cable, IPtv, etc) to then be able to play hard ball next round.

In reality, I’m not likely to visit a streaming site on the net vs. an on demand option. I’ve bought TV shows on my Xbox 360. I’ve previously purchased a season Battlestar and some random episodes of Heroes from iTunes when my cable was knocked out and my Tivo didn’t work. I tend to watch them on my laptop or Apple TV vs. my iPod. However, with the rumors of the new Touch iPod and if it has WiFi — I could see some game changing happening here.