Slashdot Mirror
NBC's Zucker Hints At Return to iTunes
Bad corporate blood led to the collapse of the NBC/Apple business relationship in the fall of last year. Now, via the Engadget news feed, comes word that things may be thawing out between the two. A for-pay article in the Financial Times had words from NBC Universal's COE Jeff Zucker, saying: "'We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple.' He then unexpectedly adds, 'We're great fans of Steve Jobs.' No telling what has caused the turnabout. Perhaps the writers strike gave both parties time to reflect on their mounting lost revenue." The site also notes that NBC signed a deal as part of the recent movie rental announcement, possibly contributing to the thaw. They link to a BusinessWeek article pointing out positive statements from Jobs reciprocating these 'feelings'.
"I don't have to wade through hours/days of crappy torrents until I find a good copy"
I don't know where you're getting your torrents from but TVrss.net and EZTV.it usually have the shows up within a half an hour after they've completed.
I use rtorrent and pytvshows to grab the torrents. Occasionally they nuke a release, but it's rare.
BTJunkie automatically sorts by seeds. Please point me to one of these so called 'crappy' torrents.
It is arguable who 'bullied' whom. My back of the napkin recollection is more like this:
NBC got essentially 'free' money by simply providing the episodes to iTunes and sitting back while Apple does all the work. Apple handles the cataloging, payment collection, file servers and network bandwidth. NBC sat and collected a large portion of each sale.
Then NBC got even more greedy. To buy a single episode of something, NBC is rumored to have wanted to force bundles. Instead of one episode for $1.99, they would for example 'force' you to buy another unrelated or perhaps two other unrelated programs for more like $4.99. My guess is this was a gambit to try and generate interest in NBC's other titles. In their twisted logic one show you actually want with two attached throwaways (you would be forced into purchasing) is somehow "cheaper" for the end customer. In my book, that simply makes the one show I want $4.99 instead of $1.99.
Apple apparently balked at the idea of these forced bundles, which would ruin iTunes' straight-forward simplicity (among other things), and told NBC to take a hike. I suppose you could say while NBC was busy strangling their golden goose, the goose realized its own long-term interest was to get up and leave.
{ - Generic Guy - }