NBC to Apple: 'You're fired!' The Americanized version of "The Office" will soon disappear from Apple iTunes. The Reg couldn't care less - we prefer the original, and we have no interest in watching even our favorite TV shows on an overpriced, DRM-shackled, handheld status symbol - but many uncultured Apple-loving web mavens are sure to be very upset. Late …
I don't like the idea of Apple deciding what the price should be for other people's IP - NBC should be allowed to charge $1000 per episode if it wishes and it should be the market that decides whether that is acceptable. It's not as if Apple can even claim they're doing it to protect consumers because otherwise they would have opened up their content to other devices and players. This is, unsurprisingly, about Apple wanting to make more money and NBC deeming the terms being offered to be unacceptable.
Still, I'm sure there will be plenty of people defending Apple and saying how they're doing it for the good of the consumer. It's about time online media was a fair and open marketplace instead of the monopoly it is.
The american version of The Office is SUPERB!! And i love the UK version, and hate americanising of our shows.
But seriously, if you haven't give it a go, get past the first few episodes and it takes on a life of its own and is the finest comedy since Arrested Development.
As for it being off Itunes.........meh.
Like Homer says "why pay for something you can see on TV for free"
I don't understand why no one saw this coming. UMG & Apple have been having this same disagreement for months. NBC is part of Universal.
I'm still hopeful they'll work it out -- I'd hate to loose Battlestar Galactica.
Oh -- and you don't get it, that's fine, but bashing iTunes as overpriced misses the point -- I use it INSTEAD of cable and it saves me money -- I subscribe to a handfull of shows that I want to see each season and it costs me less than a cable subscription and I can watch these shows at home on my big-screen TV if I want to, or sitting on an airplane, or a bus, or wherever on my laptop or other portable device. It's more flexible and LESS expensive than cable. What's so hard to understand about that?
This is about NBC wanting to start selling their shows directly (and probably at inflated prices). Sadly, there are probably enough stupid wankers who will pay $4.99 an episode for that to work.
I've seen both version of The Office and I have to say that it's easily one of the worst ten TV shows ever released on either side of the Atlantic. Give me Monarch of the Glen, or any season of Dr. Who. The Office appeals to those who never mentally left elementary school.
Can someone explain how doubling the wholesale price could "force" Apple to charge 150% more?
If we assume apple was making just 1 cent per download then NBC would have been making $1.98. If NBC doubled their wholesale price to $3.96, Apple would only need to charge $3.97. If Apple was making anything more than 1 cent the total price would be even less.
NBC demanded "double the wholesale price" for its shows, an increase that would have forced Apple to raise its iTunes retail price from $1.99 to $4.99
Now my maths may not be great, but if the wholesale price was doubled and Apple responded in kind at the retail end, that should only come to $3.98. Where does the extra $ come in? Straight to the church of Jobs.
What a friendly, unbiased first paragraph.
Also - "What Apple didn't say is that NBC is iTunes' top video supplier, responsible for about 40 per cent of all downloads." I'm afraid you're wrong on two counts, because it's 30% and they did say it!
In other news, NBC is part-owned by Universal's parent company, so, surprise surprise. They don't seem to understand that for most people, the alternative to iTunes isn't another store - it's Bittorrent.
Only mules will actually pay to download this stuff.
Seriously: Apple cannot play the distributor because Akamai is. Apple is just a nice shop front and advertising medium but as El Reg has so often pointed out Jobstunes doesn't make money but it keeps their toys in the press releases.
Just because people are buying a product, doesn't mean that if you raise the price, they still will. With TV shows available on TV and torrent sites easily for free, you'd think they'd be happy people are doing it legally and paying at all in the this day and age. Raising the price would be suicide and I think Apple are right to refuse the price hike. I'm sure the content is available elsewhere through other means. I'm also sure people would rather get them elsewhere than pay a huge price hike like that, it's simply not fair. What other products have you seen in the real world that move up in price instead of down? How would you feel if you went to buy milk tomorrow to find it had jumped almost triple in price with no explaination except that people were paying for it and they were sure you'd pay more?
NBC need to review these kind of ideas.
I agree that NBC should have the right to charge what they want for their product.
On the other hand, asking more than twice as much* for a season's worth of downloaded episodes than they're apparently willing to accept for the same (plus "special features") on physical DVD seems a tad excessive, to me. I'm sure that they would have been ecstatic, mind you, if Apple had caved, as would have all of the other content providers who would have jacked their prices as soon as they could, as well, but I suspect that, in reality, they are less interested in actually raising the price than they are in attempting to maintain the MPAA/RIAA-style monolithic control over all forms of the downstream.
Interestingly, assuming that Apple uses the standard retail rquation of "cost + x% = Price", the price rise probably would have had the iTunes store end up as less of a loss-leader, since their profits per episode downloaded would have gone up, as well.
That's, of course, assuming that they would have had any customers for the shows, when sold at a price that's 250% of what they used to cost.
I'll be looking, off and on at Amazon's page for The Office, and other NBC/Universal programs, to see whether their price for downloaded episodes goes from $1.99 to $4.99 in the next few months or not.
If they DO go up, then we can safely assume that NBC/Universal really WERE only in it for the money; if they don't, then the phrase "punitive pricing" might reasonably start being bandied about regarding their negotiations with Apple.
Cade - Any chance of a follow-up article from the Reg digging into whether/when Amazon's download prices might be expected to jump to NBC/Universal's "must have" price point?
__________
* $4.99 x 24 episodes = $119.76; Amazon's (crossed out) "List" price for Season 2 and 3 DVDs is $49.98. Of course, if you go by their "actual" prices, then NBC's "must-have" price from Apple is 4 - 5 times the DVD price.
"Overpriced, DRM-shackled, handheld status symbol"
Is this the editorial quality we can expect from The Register's technical reporting? Is this what the readership is expected to swallow? That any device - and I'm fully aware of the iPod and other media players, and how they compare, and indeed how DRM relates to the "handheld status symbol" (for the benefit of your contributor, the handheld status symbol is not DRM shackled, the purchased content is).
This is not an Apple fanboi post. This is an objective, technically aware, balanced response. I'd respond the same way if similarly erroneous and biased statements were made about any product.
Apple should accept the price increases, present them on iTunes with the increased prices and the explanation that NBC choose the prices -- and also throw in links to the same media at amazon (making sure that Apple gets the referral credit). See how long NBC likes working under those conditions...
Why pay for a show that's free on tv ? tv's are made to watch tv .. or am i missing something ? On top of that .. why would anyone pay to watch American TV garbage ?
Studios are putting out zit but garbage out there .. then they wonder why their sales are down
i mean please .. dont blame the downloaders from the net .. take a good hard at the garbage you guys are putting on the airwaves and on CD and you have the answer. It's junk so noone
feels like junk is anything more than junk from the get go .Who likes to buy junk ?
The "great" studios for making so much worthless junk.
Apple has the right idea .. that studio does nothing but junk .. leave them where they are :
at the dump.Who will remember The office in 20 years ? noone .. Who will remember
Mozart in 20 years .. get it NBC ?
iTunes used to be a sleek and sexy application, but since version 7 the thing is a buggy mess. On Vista, the thing doesn't even paint properly half the time, and the H264 playback of Quicktime is more like a slideshow than a movie. I use iTunes to track podcasts but it's quite crashy and the awful H264 playback means it's almost unusable. The user interface is also slug like, quite possibly because Apple have seen fit to inflict an OS X style interface on it, complete with grids that take an age to scroll through.
I don't blame Vista for any of this since no other multimedia app I have has problems - for example Videolan plays a charm. It's funny how Apple use to claim their stuff "just works". These days it "barely works". Apple sucks.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Hey Cade, how can you blow Ballmer and type and at the same time?"
Wow, you really fucked up that insult, didn't you, FanBoy?
Out of interest, how does being against iTunes make him pro-Microsoft? Especially as last time I checked MS weren't really a force in this arena. (If they are and I haven't heard about it, that illustrates my point neatly.)
Or perhaps, just maybe....you're an idiot?
I really am confused, on the one hand you (and others) complain that iTunes is overpriced and then continue to complain when Apple refuse to allow vendors to raise the price to an even more insane amount!
It seems to me that when it comes to Apple there are those (including the author of this article) who lose all perspective.
'Supply and Demand' is the principle by which all pricing works, if people stopped buying videos from iTunes due to price then the price would come have to come down.
As long as there is a steady demand then nothing will change and we only have ourselves to blame.
At least you have the choice of buying video off iTunes in the US, here in the UK we don't have the luxury of being ripped off by Apple... We have to settle for bing ripped off by SKY instead.
Wow - I wake up to read the Reg and what happens... I get a tirade of insult: "uncultured Apple-loving web mavens" - WTF! How dare you come on a news site and write this kind of abuse!
I agree that the iTunes video store is not for me, but why be so rude and abusive to those who do enjoy using the service. It's like a silly fan-boy rant and I'm disgusted that The Register would publish such a piece. The actual journalism that there is, is of such low quality even to the point of stating "NBC Universal informed Apple that it would not renew its contract to sell" at the top of the piece and then sites "Universal Music Group, the world's largest record label, recently declined to renew its contract with Apple" as a second "crack" - when it's the SAME COMPANY!
If any Reg staff read these reader posts, I beg you - do yourselves and all us loyal readers of your site a favour and take this silly article down.
Is anyone else completely fed up of the Apple / Universal <insert other money grabbing music / film company here> goings on?
Apple are just as guilty as NBC - they probably baulked at the deal as they would have had not so much profit.
I think its high time everyone just said fuck it, and stop buying off of them until they provide reasonably priced, drm free shows and music without trying to fleece the public continually.
Long live torrents at this rate....
Although this is apple and NBC in the story this does remind me of the net radio station stuff that has been bubbling away.
The music companies are still clinging to the idea that EVERY non-legal viewing is a lost sale, so their "losses to piracy" are making a big hole in their books. SO.. they have to now go all out to claw back this money.
Of course its the actions of a desperate and foolish industry to alienate their customers but if they had a clue they would not be in this mess in the first place.
Finally Some TV companies had the right idea and decided to combat piracy by offering legal downloads for sale at a cheap price, then they get greedy and what happens, they get yanked from the legal medium to the illegal.
Surely accepting the $1.99 is better than getting nothing when people download it all from torrent sites for nothing... unless they reckon they get more money from the MPAA and RIAA suing people than the legalimate way.
And yes, I'm not a iTunes fanboi, never owned an apple product in my life... however it was all a step in the right direction, cheaper goods legally.
*sigh*
how misleading is that? the percentage is the percentage of TV SHOW DOWNLOADS. which ends up being 1% of sales?
assuming NBC is gouging apple as much as the rest have been, apple probably makes 2 or 3 cents per sale. Let's say Apple sells 10M tv shows in 6 months. that's, oooh, $30,000 profit in 6 months, or $15,000 a quarter.
if apple sells a billion songs in the next year, that's profit of about $30M at most. divided by 4 is $75M a quarter. nothing to sneeze at, but still in the ballpark of 5% . $15,000 is 0.0002 % profit.
iTunes works well (contrary to the author's pissy statement) because it's simple, its DRM (evil but necessary for the studios) is reasonable for most people, and most of all, it works with the iPod. "Made for iPod" is far more important than almost anything in this context.
Let's see where NBCs videos will run. Zune2? Oh wait, Hulu won't play there.
Why worship an loathsome company like Apple with your money, WHEN YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE!?!?
Am I a cheapscate? Not really... I just refuse to pay money to NBC or Apple for watching something that I can usually watch for free.
Now a small nominal fee for serverspace etc. I could agree with... Something like 20 or 50 cents.
But paying 2 dollars for the priviledge of being DRMd up my ass by Apple and watching a free TV program? No thanks!
We do have the dubious pleasure of being able to buy TV content from iTunes in the UK now. Not that I'll pay that much for my shows.
Sadly I think the point on which you're wrong is that "if people stopped buying videos from iTunes due to price then the price would come have to come down". That would involve rational thinking from the content providers. Taking their cue from the music industry, I'd expect to see price increases to screw the few remaining customers out of as much money as possible.
If I keep seeing one sided pieces like this I will be de-subscribing from the register and getting my news somewhere a bit more neutral - there are many.
I own PCs and Macs and have both Apple and other manufacturers mp3 players and i get sick of these stupid comments from people who dont want to spend a few extra quid for something better built.
-1 star for the register. -1 reader if it keeps up.
"Why worship an loathsome company like Apple with your money, WHEN YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE!?!?"
Why bother paying for your booze when you can get it for free by robbing the local liquor store??
Or if you mean waiting for it to appear for free on terrestrial TV, the point is you're getting it earlier, in exactly the same way people will pay to get a series like 24 or Alias on DVD before it's broadcast on free TV. Plus the convenience of being able to play it whenever (and wherever) you want it.
DrXym said:
"iTunes used to be a sleek and sexy application, but since version 7 the thing is a buggy mess. On Vista, the thing doesn't even paint properly half the time, and the H264 playback of Quicktime is more like a slideshow than a movie. I use iTunes to track podcasts but it's quite crashy and the awful H264 playback means it's almost unusable. The user interface is also slug like, quite possibly because Apple have seen fit to inflict an OS X style interface on it, complete with grids that take an age to scroll through."
Funny, I run iTunes on XP in a virtual machine on a Mac and it exhibits NONE of that behavior. It works as expected. And its appearance has a better "fit-n-finish" that almost all Windows apps.
Victor Szulc wrote:
"Why worship an loathsome company like Apple with your money, WHEN YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE!?!?"
You can? Legally? It may not make much difference to some, but NBC is going to lose out by people using Bit Torrent like this guy. And they'll probably end up buying a shiny new iPod to play it on.
Victor, buy a Zune if you don't want to give $$$ to a "loathesome" company. Obviously you think Microsoft ISN'T loathesome, because you've obviously given them money for Vista.
or did you "download [that] for free!?!?" as well?
Here's what you fail to realize. Before iTunes came along, the music industry was doing quite an excellent job at shooting itself in the foot with very DRM limited, inconveniently priced, garbage services like "PressPlay". Part of the iTunes platform was the 99 cent price point (in the US). The videos opened at a $1.99 (USD) price point. It's the same type of "service" pricing that a company like eMusic uses, where people pay a month subscription for up to 25 downloads per month (or what have you). If the music industry didn't support the platform with its pricing, eMusic would just need to exclude them from the service they offer, right? Same thing with iTunes. Apple has certainly made exceptions here in there on certain products. Believe it or not, companies like Walmart, Target or Trader Joes (here in the states) make decisions like this too. If companies decide to move outside of the "mold" then it clear the match might not be right for their content. Let these companies keep screwing themselves. If something is working, don't break it.
El Reg is not a technology journal, it is a technology TABLOID, and in the best traditions of British newspaper journalism, it is rabidly biased in ways that it make perfectly clear - it makes no pretense of objectivity, and has no obligation to be neutral. You don't come to el Reg for objectivity any more thah you go the Daily Mail for a defence of left-wing political thought. I might also add that most of el Reg's baises are deliberately ironic. Especially Apple.
El Reg is not a serious publication and has never pretended to be. More fool you if you were naive enough to beleive that the humour was restricted to particular places.
NBC ,as well as all the 'Major' in the states, think that because a show/movie/song is popular it give them then right to STEAL MONEY from consumers. To want to "more then double" the price of a show because it is popular is the best way to show people that "alternat channel" is still the best way to you your tv shows. Once again the greed and criminal mentality of hollywood menage to make "free" way more attractive then the legal version that give no value at all except maybe? DRM that prevent you from enjoying your purchase? High price.
Digital Download need a couple of things to work:
1. No illegal DRM of any kind
2. High Quality encoding (HD?)
3. ====> LOW PRICE <====
By rigging tv shows with illegal DRM and overpricing them, NBC should be sue to encourge piracy.
Distributing movie/music/the show is a lot cheaper then retail sale. So there is no reason to jack up the price of digital download. Since there are allready overprice. (try 50 cents for a song, 99 cents for a tv show episode and 3$ for a movie and see piracy rate go down to "simple anoyance level". but wait! it will force hollywood to make a honest buck! forget it, that won;t work!
Now, I'm no Apple Fanboy, and I'm no M$ fanboy either. However, Apple and the other hollywood A$$es all think that my money is not good enough for them. They won't let me buy off iTunes because I'm neither in Europe, North America, Australia nor Japan.
Go figure, people torrent for a reason, and the reason is the stupidity of the A$$es blocking off people because they're picky about what kind of money they get.
The reason large cracks have appeared, is because unlike Virgin and HMV, Apple actually play on the side of the consumer, rather than collaborating with the music industry to rip off the public.
It's about time we the public, along with Apple and others, stuck 2 fingers right up the **** of the music and video industry and tell them it should be a FAIR price for what we consume.
The music industry, and El Regs biased, opinionated hack, should shut up, wake up, and realise that if you are fair and honest and ask only a fair price for your wares then you will sell LOADS more and make more profit, which you should return to the industry to nurture new talent and keep the industry moving.
It is the music industires fecking relentless attempt to rip off the public that have slowed the whole thing down.
Weren't they listening to us in the 80's when we told them CDs were over priced? Did they not realise that as SOON as a viable alternative to paying over inflated prices was available we'd take it?
Caveat Vendor!
You think Apple really wants to not sell to you? That Apple really values DRM? I am an Apple fanboy, or at least, I'll be painted as such. But, I'll let you in on a secret. Apple's no saint, but they don't try to lock you in with DRM. Even if you view Apple as this evil corporation, they have and will again admit that DRM doesn't work. Instead, they'll lock you in with something a thousand times more powerful than DRM: Ease of use.
This is why iTunes doesn't add any new DRM, and even let you strip it by burning to CDs. This is why iTunes doesn't ask where you get your music from, and will gladly let you put your bittorrented files into its library. Even better, it will gladly rip CDs for you, (In MP3 or un-DRMed AAC) even using CDDB and its own cover art database to make it easier to get music by places other than its store.
This is why Apple doesn't send C&D letters to places that allow you to circumvent regionalization by purchasing gift cards. (US cards: http://www.amazon.com/Apple-M9792LL-A-iTunes-Prepaid/dp/B0002CZPPG Japan cards: http://www.jbox.com/PRODUCT/ITUNESCARD ). This is why there's no such region restriction on podcasts, and they'll even host it for free. This is why they'll even link to programs that let you rip youtube videos for free ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/tubetv.html ) or nab TiVo recordings ( http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/tivodecodemanager.html ).
The easier they make it for you to play music and video (legal or otherwise), the more likely you'll use iTunes. The more you use iTunes, the more likely you'll buy an iPod or Mac. DRM never even enters the equation (It's just there to mollify the dinosaurs). It's that simple.
Try thinking logically - restrictions on geographical distribution and all aspects of DRM are at the behest of the studios and music moguls.
It's NOT Apple - and it isn't M$ either.
Are you going to rant against your local car dealer 'cos you can't put a Ford cylinder head on a Vauxhall?
"is the finest comedy since Arrested Development."
That show is the Shakespeare of Comedy. If you ain't heard of it, check it out -the only program to ever top I'm Alan Partridge Season 1 for me.
- and yes, torrents are our friends. When I can legally download a full-screen Divx episode, no restrictions, keep forever, for, say, £1.50/$1, the networks can have my money. Until then, any other way is just a boring prequel which does not get my attention.
"Try thinking logically - restrictions on geographical distribution and all aspects of DRM are at the behest of the studios and music moguls.
It's NOT Apple - and it isn't M$ either."
Ted, Microsoft's big pitch in the media world is to sell the dinosaurs the tools to make it possible to fuck the consumer in the eye. Their intention is to be the (sole) arms manufacturer in the great DRM war against consumer choice. Apple, of course, want to tuck you up too, but they seem to want to use honey rather than RAID to do it.
This might be a bit rambling, and I apologise in advance if it is. As far as iTunes is concerned, yes it is good that Apple offer a cheap service and are willing to keep that service cheap even though large companies want to hike up the prices. However, the reason that Apple can keep the price as low as possible (ie without making much profit on each sale) is simply because they overcharge for what isn't that great a piece of kit. There's probably a formula somewhere in the business plan that says for every x number of iTunes content sold we sell one iPod. The markup on the iPod probably actually is pretty close to this ratio. The iPod is not a superb MP3 player, it is good, but overpriced, it is very easy to use, the sound quality is great, but saying it is a good all round player is just wrong. In case Blain Hamon has not seen another MP3 player, it might interest him to know that I don't actually need to worry about a content library 'allowing' me to put MP3s into it. My MP3 player cost half the price of an iPod at the time for the same storage, greater variety of accepted file formats, Sennheiser earphones, great quality, and it acts as a hard drive - that is, I just plug it into my PC and I can copy whatever I want onto it. It is also still completely fine and undamaged, unlike a lot of iPods which were sold at the time and which quite quickly had battery failures (but the posters in this thread obviously have forgotten that when talking about the quality of an Apple build). It has more buttons than an iPod, but I don't really care. I sacrificed a user interface for more functionality, almost as good sound quality, and of course, some more money in my pocket.
Now, onto torrents. The idea that people will pay for things that are available on TV is ridiculous. Television companies need to understand that torrents will keep on existing no matter what they do. They should embrace it, releasing their own torrents of popular shows with unobtrusive adverts (by that I mean not having 15 in the middle, more like one at the start and two at some point in the middle). Ideally of course they would have their own streaming system, but it's too easy to copy them and until the service you provide is better than the one that torrents provide for free, you can't compete. They can monitor how many people are viewing the adverts by the download for the torrent file, and quote this to advertisers.
Making something difficult will never eradicate it, make it as easy as possible to do it, then control it. Bringing in adverts slowly and making it easy and well-structured, with high quality video would mean that people would get used to downloading it from their sites instead of torrent sites, then adverts can be filtered in slowly. Not only are you making money on every "missed sale", you will be reaching (and making money out of) new people who would not have the chance to previously watch the show, and who might buy boxsets. But who cares about what they buy, you can make money on advertising revenue using traditional models with an extended user base.
At current itunes rates, that $5 would become around 4 pounds an xvid-quality episode, or near 100 quid for the season. You can get higher quality in a DVD box set, with extras and no DRM, for around 40.
Or the more likely competitor: you can download it in full HD quality for nothing. This is exactly what'll happen if prices balloon like this.
I would say that I'd side on Apple on this one, because US$2 is already TOO MUCH for my liking, and anything above that is just stupid.
But, alas, I am not able to buy from iTunes. Not supported in my country. Why the hell would anybody open up a "global store" and then bar the "global" part of the store?? This only makes sense in stuff like PayPal, where I am able to withdraw money into a domestic account, thus requiring the banking infrastructure for that. Buying with a CC is international.
That said, I also think that 99 cents USD is too high for a song, especially because it is DRM'd. Allofmp3 nabbed the perfect pricing scheme, at least for the Mexican average salary (about 500 USD/month) and low enough to qualify in my book as "casual spending". iTunes is basically 1-1 on the actual release.
NIN Year Zero: 18 bucks.
iTunes Year Zero, 16 tracks @ 99 cents: 16 bucks.
theoretical Allofmp3 Year Zero: 1.50 (or something like that)
Your standard "pirated" 300 MP3 CD sold in Mexico City's Metro: 10 MXN (about 80 US cents)
so allofmp3 was the only one that was actually competitive on those terms. Even if I don't agree on the iTunes overpricing, I disagree even more on studios trying to up even MORE the outrageous pricing.
No DRM troubles (though so time-consuming and expensive you might as well buy a copy - unless it's in the library), no need to locate a torrent, no need for expensive hardware, no need for bloaty software, easy and intuitive pause & rewind functions, very portable, can be consumed on the bog or in the bath.
Books... mmm. I'm off to read one now.
Tim might be onto something here. Books almost never need charging, save for when it's dark out.
Re: Anon coward. Wow. You're still on the battery trolling? C'mon. That's almost as outdated as the one-button mouse claim. Move up to talking about scratched displays, at least.
There's actually reasons the iPod stores the songs with 4-letter file names and a database, as opposed to a straight folder layout. Less CPU needed to sort and scan for file names is one, but the other is that this way, only one copy of a song is needed, even if it's in a dozen playlists, as opposed to a copy in each folder. Fun fact: not only can you mount an iPod without drivers like any other removable drive, but you can even boot off of it, if your computer can boot from an external drive.
Is it me, or does this all come to rock, paper, scissors? Downloaded files are more convenient than DVDs because it's instant access. Steaming/broadcast is more convenient than downloaded files because then you can use advertising revenue. DVDs are more convenient than streaming/broadcast because you don't have to have any ads, and you can fast forward. And Downloaded files are more convenient than DVDs...
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