NBC chief says Apple 'destroyed' music pricing

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  • Reply 81 of 176
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mrjoec123 View Post


    "Variable" pricing is code for more expensive. Period. Watch the Amazon store. They start with a bunch of tunes at 89 cents, but once it becomes successful, watch the prices go up and up and up. The same thing happened with CDs.



    Factoring in inflation, the originally promised cost of CDs did meet the target.



    Quote:

    This NBC guy just proved my point by admitting that NBC was pressuring Apple to up the price on Heroes, its most popular show. What would have stopped them from making it $4.99 the following year? or $5.99 the year after that?



    Keep in mind that the $4.99 figure was put out by the same PR people that said that Leopard wasn't going to be delayed and AppleTV will ship on time. We don't know what the real figure they wanted was going to be.
  • Reply 82 of 176
    straskstrask Posts: 107member
    The sad thing is, as much as I appreciate Apple's success in coming up with a business model for sellling content online, Jeff Zucker is in the right. Apple prices content so as to minimize profits for the producers and to maximize the sale of its hardware. I understand Apple's desire to keep pricing simple but $2.99 is no more difficult than $1.99. And yeah, Apple should be paying a royalty from its iPod sales.



    However, 50 million streams at NBC.com implies that NBC should stop dealing with its writers like Apple deals with NBC and start paying some royalties.
  • Reply 83 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ifiredmyboss.com View Post


    Actually it would be 199M in sales not profit. There is a cost involved to the shows.

    NBC says it profited 15 million not 15 million in Revenue. There is a difference.

    How much did they have to pay the production company, ads, who know what else they throw in there.

    In theory NBC could have reaped all the the 199M in revenue and still claimed 15 million in profit.



    As some music artist and old school TV people about the studios "accounting". Example... the networks claimed that some of James Garners old shows never made money even thought they were hits and were on the air for a number of years. He had to sue them to get the books opened.



    Ridiculous! NBC already made their money when they sold the ads for these shows. Utter baloney!
  • Reply 84 of 176
    Last time i checked Heroes is cheaper on Amazon then itunes. So why is Apple to blame and why even tell the press that you left Itunes cause you wanted more money.
  • Reply 85 of 176
    My guess is that the companies are holding out for more money for HD content but Apple doesn't want to play that game. The producers are used to getting premium $ for new media sales, look at CD vs. tape, DVD vs. VCR, and HD DVD/Blue Ray vs. DVD. There may have been justification in the past, but I don't think that follows with digital content. To the consumer they technically get less for their money than they do with DVD both in quality and content at today's prices. For the production companies it costs less, they have the digital file and I would bet that Apple encodes it to MP4 and adds in the DRM for them. Besides it is a moot point, Apple has set the price and for anyone else to be successful they will have to beat Apple's price. Look at Amazon's new store, I haven't but the news stories claim $0.89 for most songs. The competition is only going to bring lower prices not higher ones. If Amazon is successful then a year from now the price for a song will be $0.79 and a TV show will be $1.49.



    On the plus side, Apple has DVR software already in their FW development kit. They also have a plugin environment with QT. I'm sure that it would not take much to arm Apple's hardware/software arsenal with the legal tools for the consumer to take advantage of recording OTA/cable transmissions as well as tap into the other freely available codecs which are used for video sales and rentals on the internet today. The only thing that they don't have is a full version of the latest WMP which supports rental models. Given half a reason I'm sure that Apple would pull a RIP/Play/Burn campaign, or as close to it as they legally could, with videos as they did in the beginning with music.
  • Reply 86 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SpamSandwich View Post


    Ridiculous! NBC already made their money when they sold the ads for these shows. Utter baloney!



    I think you're almost right.



    In theory:

    3 years ago:

    - NBC sells the shows to the network &/or individual stations.

    - NBC sells DVDs of the shows



    1 year ago

    - NBC makes money per sale on iTunes

    - NBC sells the shows to the network &/or individual stations for a slightly smaller amount (less viewers due to iTunes)

    - NBC sells less DVDs of the shows



    So iTunes sales are not all Gravy, they take away revenue from elsewhere.

    Still .... I think we can be confident that NBC will be doctoring their figures to make the strongest case they can (as any company does)
  • Reply 87 of 176
    19841984 Posts: 955member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    Ah what cruel people Apple are!?! I'd have to agree with NBC, Apple should pay a portion of their hardware profit, but only the same portion as every TV maker pays NBC now, and every DVD player manufacturer is required to pay.



    Why should Apple be the only company forced to do so? Shouldn't every company that sells a portable media player be forced to? Don't forget the cellphones. What about all the cheap Chinese knock-offs that are sold on eBay? How do you collect royalties from them? What happens when you have dozens if not hundreds of content providers demanding a cut as well? Bye bye profit. Bye bye product.
  • Reply 88 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    What? NBC is in the business of making money, not be a charity. It's their job to try to make money where they legally can. I don't know where your Billions of dollars figure comes from, Apple's video service probably hasn't grossed half a billion.







    From a recent interview with a European Universal exec, we do know the number for music is roughly 70%. And that's not enough to him. I really don't think it's unrealistic to expect that videos are sold at similar margins.





    With all due respect, based on your bottom-line tone concerning charity vs. making money, I'm surprised that you misunderstood my comment about "billions of dollars". I was referring to the billions of dollars Universal makes from THEIR OWN broadcasted content and distribution channels.



    They were already creating, producing, distributing (analog and digital) the content before iTunes came along. Whining about how much money they get from iTunes and twisting the reality of Apple hardware success as justification is certainly legal, but bespeaks a certain lack of business integrity or sanity that I'm sure will come back around to their detriment.
  • Reply 89 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by strask View Post


    ...And yeah, Apple should be paying a royalty from its iPod sales....



    Explain to me why Apple should pay a royalty to the content producers from their hardware sales when the record companies (and video) are not contributing to the technology and R&D to develop the new technology? If they did agree to this how much would an iPod sell for when you count in all the record companies and video producers? And should all other hardware companies, be it digital or analog (ie record) companies pay a similar profit, because surely they are benefiting just as much, or more, from the content then Apple is with their iPod/iPhone/AppleTV sales.
  • Reply 90 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by rtdunham View Post


    seems logical, but my widget dictionary says twofold means twice as many...



    Yeah, the term probably dates back to Olde English, i.e., before paper was known in the West..... it probably is short hand for "two sides folded" rather than "two folds."



    But I have to admit that the original surmise was quite clever.
  • Reply 91 of 176
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by carloblackmore View Post


    With all due respect, based on your bottom-line tone concerning charity vs. making money, I'm surprised that you misunderstood my comment about "billions of dollars". I was referring to the billions of dollars Universal makes from THEIR OWN broadcasted content and distribution channels.



    They were already creating, producing, distributing (analog and digital) the content before iTunes came along. Whining about how much money they get from iTunes and twisting the reality of Apple hardware success as justification is certainly legal, but bespeaks a certain lack of business integrity or sanity that I'm sure will come back around to their detriment.



    Demanding a portion of hardware sales is a stupid thing, but I have no idea how else to interpret your previous comment. It almost sounded like you didn't think that NBC should make money from Internet sales at all.
  • Reply 92 of 176
    My prediction (worth all of 2¢): December 31 will see a pink slip from GE for JZ. That is, if NBC is not sold off by then.



    The guy is an embarrassing throw-back, and probably goes against the grain of how the "new" GE is trying position itself.
  • Reply 93 of 176
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iMick View Post


    At $1 per episode, I'd be buying a lot of shows, AND, an AppleTV or maybe even two AppleTV's.



    $2 each is too much. I'm not in that big of a hurry to watch the stuff. At $2 per episode, I'll just buy the dvd's when they come out, watch them, then dump them on eBay, thereby costing me very little.



    At that price, it's definitely not my primary source. I only buy from iTunes if my recorder messes up.



    I mean, I pay $13/yr for all of Comedy Central through my (legal) satellite arrangement, so even the multi-pass of the Daily Show is a bit much. I like that the iTunes doesn't have ads but it's a trade-off I can make.
  • Reply 94 of 176
    Jeff Zucker is a lazy, greedy bastard.



    Hulu.com? The name itself kind of reminds me of the Microsoft Turd Brick.



    Get real.
  • Reply 95 of 176
    So Zucker wanted to increase the price of a program over 150% plus gain more control over the iTunes Music Store... IN YOUR DREAMS, PAL!!! What an ego!!!!!!!!



    Jobs an Apple pulled it off when you guys were still charging too much for CD's and now you want to whine about destroying an industry??? The technology was there and you knew it... but instead of coming up with a business plan for it... you sat on your butts and kept being greedy. No sympathy here and I hope Apple and the iPod financially put you under for good you greedy little man!!! Go and create something worthwhile or get out of the way!
  • Reply 96 of 176
    4.99 an episode? Wont that make it much more expensive than just buying the complete season on DVD?



    What the hell are they smoking?
  • Reply 97 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GregAlexander View Post


    I think you're almost right.



    ... I think we can be confident that NBC will be doctoring their figures to make the strongest case they can (as any company does)



    Actually not every company does.



    I think that's part of why this is turning into a mini-war. Under the surface there's a sub-plot playing out of the type of behavior consumers expect and are beginning to demand from companies in a digital era. A whole good-company vs. bad-company plot. Pro-consumer vs. Pro-conglomerate.



    For a while, companies have been able to get away with doctoring the numbers when it comes to digital profit. Our parents' generation looked at digital life as a complicated expensive black box that companies could charge whatever they wanted for (which it was, a long time ago). Generation X and beyond isn't so easily daunted. Companies like Google and Apple understand that shift. They've been key to removing a lot of the mystery and intimidation of digital stuff, making it fun. They're now dictating that the real cost and value should lie in the quality, simplicity, innovation, and fun-factor of a product - not in the ubiquity or mere existence of it.
  • Reply 98 of 176
    Apple has sold zillions of dollars of hardware off our backs..............is precious! I and everyone I know purchased our computers either PC or Macs in order to watch all of the fine television programming that they provide via the purchasing abilities of media thru iTunes. To hell with the friggin' television that is sitting in the living room already. Perhaps instead of trying to blame someone else for their 3rd place woes, perhaps they might try to get some shows that people want to watch! Save the show and save the world!!!LOL
  • Reply 99 of 176
    If NBC is worried about Apple gaining from iPod sales due to the purchase of NBC content from the iTunes store .... then why aren't they pissed at Sony, Panasonic, and Hitachi for benefitting from TV sales? Of course the answer is that they get a bigger piece of the pie ... our cash ... from TV ads.



    Business models that are out of touch with their customers are doomed to fail.
  • Reply 100 of 176
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Demanding a portion of hardware sales is a stupid thing, but I have no idea how else to interpret your previous comment. It almost sounded like you didn't think that NBC should make money from Internet sales at all.



    You're right. It could seem like I was implying NBC should be letting people download their content for free. Which I don't think is reasonable. But obviously iTunes was making money for them.



    In my book, making more money is not a good enough reason to inconvenience loyal paying customers. If they were losing money, that would be different, but I doubt they were. I'm their customer, I was willing to pay them to download their shows so I could watch them on my computer or iPod when or wherever I want. But in December it'll be gone. And it won't be replaced with anything that adds quality or benefit to my life in anyway. Not to mention that their current online video is incompatible with Macs. That type of profit seeking makes absolutely no sense.
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