NBC’s Zucker: Apple Turned Dollars into Pennies

Zucker has a point, well maybe not, but the thing is Steve Jobs is not right either. There is a medium that would make people happier.

First off, what is it that Steve Jobs has against commericals being added to the videos? iTunes has a whole section of songs that are played on commercials, I know that is where I have heard a great many of the songs I later went to iTunes to pay for.

So adding a commerical or two to a video is not going to kill anyone, especially if they can drop the price from $1.99 to $.99 no one loses. As much as I love my Macs (four) and my iPods (three) and my iPhone (one) Steve Jobs has made some bad calls, like “No one wants to watch videos on a tiny screen. iTunes is just about music…”

Commericals are going to be paying for podcasts and so them paying for vids is not that big of a friking deal

Zucker proves the Peter Principle - he’s trying to sound all smart for his bosses when clearly they are clueless as he is. It’s fine to walk away from a “retailer” if you want to but then to pick a fight and ramble about incorrect conclusions - what a twit. Did Apple insist NBC not launch hulu or feed content to nbc.com? No. But Zucker can’t run two businesses? He can’t sell on itunes AND launch a new venture - it’s either or? AND he has to pick a fight with S. Jobs … which graners you lots of votes for dumbest CEO of the year which he should win hands down … did Zucker learn nothing from Eisner (now in the trading card business?) … of course Zucker is digital in one sense, he’s either on or off - he can’t be in two states …

Theres a Zucker born every minute! One can already ‘download’ a program to an ipod legally and for free. First, get an EyeTV from ElGato (or other DVR device), program it to record your favorite show, export to the ipod, and bingo! No payment to NBC or Apple, and you can record -any- program you wish. You can even edit out the commercials.

Hulu is going to be a multimedia download website partnership between NBC & Fox, so those Fox shows on iTunes just might go away eventually. Hulu is going to be free w/ ads, a la SpiralFrog. Probably also only able to be used w/ Windows, .NET & IE, like SpiralFrog. Probably also only able to be used w/ Windows, .NET & IE, like SpiralFrog. If Hulu is going to be free to those who would download, and NBC & Fox expect to make big money from ad content, I still don’t see it being as big a money maker as remaining w/ iTunes and keeping (or lowering) the old download charges…

“What the media companies are trying to do is prevent the growth of a digital Walmart, and create more competition.” - Posted By Jenny, CA

That is funny!

Media companies do not care about creating competition. They care about making money. NBC is no better than Apple or Walmart. But NBC is missing out on easy money from selling their shows on Apple. How much work does NBC have to do to sell their shows on iTunes? Not much.

The shows are shown because advertisers pay for ad time. If you can edit out the commercials and get folks to pay two bucks an episode, you have made easy money. Why miss out on that easy money?

This is great!

Does it occur to anyone else how similar Suckers’ comments sound to the dialogue from the Godfather movies? “Michael, you should let us wet our beak a little…” It never occurred to me until just now how that comment befits a vulture. Ha! The success of Apple and Itunes is in no way a reflection upon the success of anything related to Sucker and NBC. I think if I ran Apple, there would be no way they could now negotiate their way back onto Itunes. In another Godfather term, Morte!

holy cow .. how can he say that itunes killed the music business.. if anything they helped the business in many ways but most importantly gave the consumer more control on what they buy and open more possibilities for
small or independent labels to get exposure and “compete” with the large labels without spending a fortune in promotion

Rico - Obviously NBC didn’t feel that the ROI was high enough and placed a higher value on a new startup content distribution opportunity than $15 million (or whatever the real number is) from Apple. NBC isn’t the only content provider unhappy with Apple. The negotiations with the music studios were contentious as well. Apple is in a precarious position here as only a distributor of content. If enough music labels and networks pull their content, then what will Apple be left with. And will the fanboys really stick to only content available on iTunes to “support” poor little Apple? The content providers are just biding their time until enough viable competitors to iTunes come online. It’s funny how the same people who decry Microsoft’s exploiting of its dominant market share position are more than willing to make excuses for Apple when it does the same thing with iTunes. What happens when there is no content available for Apple to sell? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does a screaming fanboy make a sound?

Networks have been so used to extorting dollars from advertisers, they think they can now do the same to end users.

Before Apple, music was being pirated and record companies were losing fortunes. Apple didn’t kill the profitability in music, they gave music companies and music users a viable alternative to piracy.

Mr. Zucker will either learn the same lesson, or resort to RIAA legal tactics to try and defend his current strategy.

People will tell you what your shows are worth, not the other way around Mr. Zucker.

Apple = Walmart
NBC = Q-Tip Manufacturer

If you are a consumer, you love Apple like Walmart. Lower prices, can get a wide variety of product, and Apple / Walmart makes all the money. If you are a producer, you love the exposure you get from Apple/Walmart, but darn it, they squeeze your margins to the bare minimum. What the media companies are trying to do is prevent the growth of a digital Walmart, and create more competition.

Does it strick anybody as odd that while Zucker states that NBC only made $15m this past year from iTunes sales, NBC was asking for a “modest” increase in price from $1.99 to $2.99 and episode? Wait…let me do the math…that’s and extra $15m a year right? So…what i can’t understand is why a huge company like NBC would be willing to lose an entire presence for a measly $15m more a year. I bet they burn that in pilot bugets a year. I guess maybe Zucker planned to have even more terrible shows get canned and needed the extra cash.

Forget NBC. I’ll be an iTunes fan boy and refuse to give them any more money. Already I’m finding shows still on iTunes, like Fox’s Prison Break, that I’ll replace with what I was buying on iTunes to watch on my iPhone.

NBC stands for “No Brains Corporation.” Jobs is the future. Networks are the past. NBC had an opportunity to board the train, but its pulling away from the station by the end of 2007.

I agree with all your comments. I literally spent hundreds of dollars on NBC shows last year on iTunes. I hardly ever watch NBC on tv and if it weren’t for iTunes I would have never watched any of their shows. How do we complain to NBC. Im tired of watching tv shows on websites. I want to watch them on the go on my iPhone. And NO - NBC should not get any money from my iPhone purchase.

Sorry mister Zucker, you’ve pretty much guaranteed you will never see a dime from me unless I happen to watch the show on TV.

I’m a huge fan of the idea of downloading legal content through iTunes. That said I refuse to pay DVD pricing for all the extra crap on a DVD. I’m there to watch the story and have little interest in the extras. Add to this that I hate the 4 boxes of media I already have from years prior to internet downloading.

Why don’t you give legal downloaders a price-break for reducing their carbon footprint.

Congratulations ABC… I’ll be renewing my Season’s Pass for Lost. Byte me NBC/Universal Bittorrent can serve my SciFi/Heroes needs until you wake up.

NBC can’t see the forest for the trees. I like “The Office” and love having it on my iPhone — I plan to continue purchasing other shows from iTunes. But if I can’t get it from iTunes, I’ll just download it from a file sharing site. NBC is choosing nothing over something. They may think they’re making a stand based on principle, but the fact is that they don’t understand how iTunes can be important to them in the bigger picture.

Recently, Zucker said: “The television makers sold millions of dollars worth of hardware (b&w, color, HD) off the back of our content and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.” (The pricing of broadcast TV has been FREE for a long time.) :)

Heh, wasn’t there a CEO of Disney that locked horns with Jobs? Where is he now, and who is now the majority stakeholder of Disney?

Zucker is a lightweight compared to Eisner. And Eisner REALLY DIDN’T FARE WELL going against Jobs.

This guy just can’t read the signposts along the way, can he?

I really wanted to get my $35 season off of iTunes for Heroes this year so I could watch it on my iPod. I guess NBC doesn’t need my money. I guess I’ll be catching up on “Lost” instead.

No wonder NBC is in 3rd place out of the big three. His rational is obviously skued.

Ummmm, when did the studios start asking for a cut from the TV/DVD/VHS/Blu-Ray manufacturers?

I love it most when the bozos of the music industry jab a sharp stick in their own eyes. Their business model; charge $18 for a CD with 2, or maybe 3 songs you WANT, and 15 you DON’T!!! The kids today are a whole lot SMARTER than these industry bozos! Fight on!

I’m a news junkie so I watch CNN and other outlets weekdays rather than the major or cable broadcast channels. Weekends, I’ll tape one or two of Sci-Fi’s Friday night shows and now, watch free shows on ABC and CBS web sites. I’m now a fan of “Jericho” and have hooked into “Pushing Daisies” and “Samantha Who?” (weak show, great talent). I would watch the NBC Thursday night shows in Sunday night but I don’t bother with Tivo and too much hassle for a VCR, $8 gets me a ticket for a foreign movie at an art cinema.

People simmer down. Ok Apple did not destroy the business, but doesn’t NBC need to make a margin. Like it or not, those shows were popular and were good for Apple. It seems people are willing to shell out money for an ipod without binking (think about the margins Apple makes). But when someone else wants to make more, all of a sudden they are cry babies. Come on, the video ipod and Apple TV are there for the movies and TV shows. People are not buying for the love of Apple.

It seems Zucker suffers from “selective memory syndrom”. Didn’t NBC praise the iTunes Music Store for giving new life to the Office in particular?

Prediction:

within 6 months NBC will chose between Jeff Zucker & AAPL. Hhmmnn: wonder about the outcome, NOT.

Zucker and NBC made $15 Million selling shows on iTunes that they otherwise wouldn’t have made had it not been for iTunes. I don’t get it. How is that bad for NBC? If I’m going to pay for an otherwise “free” TV show, then I want to be able to take it with me on my iPod. I don’t want to watch it on Hulu.com on my computer.

I don’t think I use content to buy hardware… I use hardware to by content. That said I will not be dumping my hardware so I can watch content. In gfact the easier I can get content with my Hardware the more I will watch it. I like the Office but never ever watch it on TV. No time to sit thru all those commercials. if half my time watching shows to to sit thru repeated commercials then I don’t need the shows or the content providers.

OK….

A) Apple is selling millions of portable players weekly and people actually love to use them.

B) Apple makes it very easy to get TV shows loaded onto those players and people are buying them.

C) Apple takes a only a minimal percentage of the price charged to customers to primarily to cover its distribution costs

D) It has been proven that Apple Itunes downloads have led to increased broadcast viewership (NBC Office)

And this bonehead Zucker WITHDRAWS from Apple agreement ?? Shouldn’t he be expanding it by embracing Apple and pushing others (Amazon, MSFT) to build similar distribution mechanisms which cost NBC nothing ?

Let’s start the clock on when this idiot will be fired.

At $3-$5 an episode, they are asking us to pay $72-$120 a season to watch The Office! These guys are out of their minds. What value are they adding when it’s available for FREE over the air? Get a TV-tuner card for your PC (for the same amount) and you can have all the shows you like on your iPod.

Apple “destroyed” the music business ?

The fool, Zucker, doesn’t realize that Apple saved the music business by showing that people will pay for digital downloads. If there were no Itunes we would all be in a BitTorrent free download world by now. Now that would have destroyed the music business.

All he is going to do is waste a large amount of shareholder money on Hulu and other silly efforts to hold onto an old business model. These suits in corner offices making millions off of creative content are disgusting. Can’t wait until we have a direct distribution model (10 years away) and see these guys where they belong….selling used cars.

funny thing is he’s just hurting himself not apple… making it more difficult to put his company’s shows on apple’s media player simply promotes pirating. Now instead of pennies, they’ll make… well… nothing.

“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.”

No, A“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,”

No, what killed the music industry was not Apple’s pricing. If anything, Apple’s pricing gave the industry a few more years on life-support before dying a death that they have brought upon themselves by failing to serve the needs and desires of the artists and music consumers.

Zucker’s comments depict perfectly why the big media companies are doomed. Apple was providing NBC with a way to profit off of digital downloading.

News flash Zucker: this downloading will take place irrespective of whether or not you make your content legally available. Your new Hulu will be a disaster, I can promise you that. Users love Apple, and they love iTunes; in fact, iTunes has been the only (legal) model that has worked thus far.

You want a cut of iPod sales? Why in the world would you be entitled to that? People were only paying for your content because Apple developed a model that actually worked (i.e. generated sales). The iPod is only a part of this equation, albeit a large one.

I look forward to watching NBC come crawling back to Apple, at which point Zucher will be ousted as CEO. No wonder NBC has been tanking for the last five years. Losers with no vision.

Is this guy serious? Apple destroyed the music business? By offering something for $1.00 that everyone else was getting for free? Talk about out of touch… no wonder Apple wasn’t able to negotiate with him.

“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.

Some would argue that Innovation destroyed the music industry. Remember, before iTunes there was Napster; the MP3 and the buyer changed the music industry. Apple simply capitolized on that change.

So now the media houses recognize that the media model has changed and want to “control” their profits. Here’s a hint, innovate, modify and improve on what’s out there; and make sure to give the customers what they want.

As for NBC… I bought the first season of Hero’s off of iTunes and it looks like I will not be buying the second season from anyone. Shame really.

NBC does not seem to get it. CD’s are not selling because people copy them -> DVD Ripers are getting hugely popular now so you can copy them to the iPOD Touch and iPhone. The higher the barrier (3 bucks an episode is an increase of 50% in costs) the more people will start to copy and not buy. And I will certainly start copying music again if I can not find it on iTunes, if NBC withdraws they will go down the spiral of illegal copying again, and I would understand. They see Apple as a thread while actually Apple is making it easy for me to buy legal music which I will stop doing if I can not buy it on iTunes. I have never bought anywhere else legal music and probably won’t.

The thing that Jeff Zucker fails to realize is that the Music industry has destroyed itself. Not only by alienating its customer base through litigation, but the fact that it hasn’t kept up with the times in terms of supplying media in a modern technology (i.e. MP3s, etc) hasn’t helped. Also in my opinion, the quantity of good enjoyable content as been steadily decreasing over the last 10-15 years to the point where we are stuck with awful music that has about killed the airwaves (and given rise to Sirius and XM). He should stop focusing on the “channel” of media and focus on making the content better. Also $4.99 (or $2.99 as he suggests) is ludicrous given that you can see the same awful show for free (with commercials). If iTunes revenue isn’t up to their liking, he should open other options that are as easy to use.

What the old media companies are simply not understanding is that the new generation (the generation that they need to buy their product) want to be able to buy it digitally. They dont wont it full of advertising as they just want to watch the content not the crap that goes with it on normal TV. Asking for a slice of the Apple ipod sales is stupid and shows the true lack of understanding they have. Do they get a slice of Radios sold? of TV’s sold? of any media player sold? no they just want to try and get more money for what they know is the beginning of the end for the old style of making money and moving over to the digital age. The Internet and its easy, fast way of delivering content is the future and its NOT GOING TO GO AWAY!

Cry baby!! Just take a few of those CEO big bucks you make and buy some Apple stock and get over it!! You don’t steer the ship any longer!!

what a cry baby. what does he want next, a cut from vizio, samsung, sony for selling HDTVs??