[opendtv] Re: News: NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing

  • From: "John Willkie" <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:33:01 -0700

How about we end the "content oligopoly" nonsense?  Anybody can create
content and anybody can distribute content.  You are complaining about the
cost of content that you don't buy, and which you can 'buy' for the cost of
watching an over the air TV show.

Speaking of ACTUAL MONOPOLIES, your friends in the cable business, it
appears, will lose their contractually-enforced monopoly on serving many
apartment dwellers in an FCC meeting tomorrow.

If the cable monopolies don't do something to get rid of him, FCC Chairman
Kevin Martin will continue his campaign to strip cable of their protective
cloaks.

See, you complain about the "cost" of free media, but you never address the
monopolies that you actually pay money to, like your cable company.

Cable doesn't compete with broadcast; and cable attempts to keep out all new
entrants in their markets.  That mostly worked, until the new entrants
turned out to be bigger than the cable companies.

If only the fools had bought into the CableCard thing, they probably
wouldn't have an FCC Chairman intent on stripping them down.

John Willkie



-----Mensaje original-----
De: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] En
nombre de Craig Birkmaier
Enviado el: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 2:24 AM
Para: OpenDTV Mail List
Asunto: [opendtv] News: NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing

Perhaps this is why U.S. Consumers are paying through the nose for 
their content fixes. IMHO Apple is charging at least double what the 
content they are selling via the iTunes store is worth. Yet the 
content moguls - like NBC Universal - want us to pay significantly 
more, and have more control over the way we view their content.

Greed is killing the content oligopoly...now if we could only 
accelerate the process a bit!

Regards
Craig



http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/29/nbc_chief_says_apple_destroyed
_music_pricing.html

NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing
By Katie Marsal
Published: 05:00 PM EST

NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker on Sunday urged colleagues 
to take a stand against Apple's iTunes, charging that the digital 
download service was undermining the ability of traditional media 
companies to set profitable rates for their content online.

"We know that Apple has destroyed the music business -- in terms of 
pricing -- and if we don't take control, they'll do the same thing on 
the video side," Zucker said at a breakfast hosted by Syracuse's 
Newhouse School of Communications.

His comments Sunday were the most aggressive yet since NBC informed 
Apple last month that it had decided not to renew its contract to 
sell digital downloads of television shows on iTunes after this year.

NBC originally claimed to be seeking more control over the pricing of 
songs and videos that it was selling on iTunes, in addition to better 
piracy controls and more flexibility to bundle video content in an 
effort to increase revenues.

For its part in the bitter feud, Apple responded by saying NBC was 
asking for a twofold increase in the wholesale price of its TV show 
content, which would have resulted in the retail price to iTunes 
customers increasing to $4.99 per episode from $1.99.

Answering questions at the breakfast Sunday, Zucker offered 
substantially more color on the iTunes matter, explaining that it was 
"a relatively easy decision" for NBC to walk away from the Apple 
download service because it had only earned about $15 million from 
the service last year in spite of accounting for about 40 per cent of 
the videos sold on the store.

He said NBC routinely propositioned Apple to breach its standard 
pricing model and experiment with higher pricing for one hit show 
such as "Heroes" by raising the price from the iTunes standard $1.99 
to $2.99 on a trial basis.

"We wanted to take one show, it didn't matter which one it was, and 
experiment and sell it for $2.99," he said. "We made that offer for 
months and they said no."

The NBC chief also revealed that in addition to more pricing 
flexibility, his firm was also seeking a cut of Apple hardware sales 
-- such as the iPod and iPhone -- which were capable of viewing 
content downloaded from the iTunes Store.

"Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our 
content and made a lot of money," he said. "They did not want to 
share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust 
pricing."

Zucker's comments also arrive just as NBC and NewsCorp. are launching 
their joint online video venture, Hulu.com, which aims to compete 
with iTunes by offering streaming TV and other commercial video 
content to viewers under an ad-supported model.

He said that 50 million streams of TV shows accessed on NBC.com 
during the month of October are proof that there is a demand for 
traditional TV series on the web.

"It's extraordinary," he said. "It's like a small cable channel in 
our universe that is becoming very successful."
 
 
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