Hardball: Apple Responds to NBC

Apple, in response to NBC’s increasingly aggressive negotiating tactics, is not going to offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming Fall TV season on iTunes. This ratcheting of tensions could conceivably evaporate if the two companies come to some sort of agreement. NBC accounts for 40 percent of Apple’s iTunes downloads. From John Shinal of MarketWatch:

”The Apple-NBC story in a nutshell is that NBC Universal executives did a bad impersonation of Marlon Brando and made Jobs an offer that he couldn’t accept.

”According to the release from Apple, NBC’s offer would have forced the Cupertino, Calif.-based company to raise the price of an episode to $4.99 from $1.99. Rather than wait until December, when the current agreement ends, Jobs slammed the door on the relationship.
The question now is who will be more hurt by the split.”

Three of the10 best-selling shows on iTunes last season were NBC properties.

(image via clipart)

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