There has been a lot of noise bouncing around the Internet this morning that NBC has chosen not to renew their agreement with Apple’s iTunes Store. NBC had to give Apple a 90 day notice to pull out of their deal or it would have renewed automatically at the end of this year.
I’m not sure if NBC is using this as a negotiating tool or what, but it seems like an awfully dumb move on their part to pull their content from one of the largest digital media retailers in the world. I understand that all of the television and movie studios are experimenting with online delivery, but the iTunes Store is a proven model that works very well for all parties involved. Do you think that NBC would ever pull their DVD box sets out of Best Buy or Wal-Mart stores? That wouldn’t happen in a million years. iTunes Store provides a way for the studios to make money on each individual episode of their shows that they distribute freely over the airwaves. This just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
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