NBC Uses Microsoft And Zune To Sell It’s Content

May 06

NBC Uses Microsoft And Zune To Sell It’s Content

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NBC and Zune logos It's been quite a while since NBC decided to pull it's content from iTunes so that it could give away the content on it's own website and Hulu.com. I'm not really sure where the logic is in that since they wanted to control the price of the content being sold on iTunes. After being pulled from iTunes, NBC makes no money at all except for the income from the ads in the content.

So, now I read that NBC has worked out a deal with Microsoft to sell it's content through Microsoft's Zune Marketplace. For how much? You may have guessed it, $1.99!

Zune and NBC sitting in a tree:
Today, Microsoft announced that its Zune Marketplace would begin selling TV programming and guess with whom Zune’s sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. Right, NBC Universal. And why? Because, much like Microsoft was more than happy to give music companies a portion of the profit from every Zune sale, the Redmond crew responded to NBC’s demands for variable pricing with a sycophantic “Please sir, may I have another?”

Am I missing something here? I'm guessing that Microsoft is going to allow NBC to set the prices of their content, but it's going to take quite a bit of an increase of the price to match what they would have made if they were still on iTunes.

Well, we all know just how intelligent NBC executives are.

Update (5/8/08): So here some new info on the Microsoft-Zune/NBC deal:

Microsoft May Build a Copyright Cop Into Every Zune | The New York Times:
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.

Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.

Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.

So Microsoft tells NBC it will assume that all it's customers are theives/pirates and will check all content to see if content being played or moved to the Zune is pirated. I'm assuming that if it is, it will not allow the data to be transferred to the Zune or at least not played.

I wonder if it has to check every file including pictures. Can you imagine taking a picture of a television with the latest episode of Heroes on because you wanted to show off your television only to have Microsoft not allow you to display the image because the content is the property of someone else?

Now, pundits are saying that Microsoft is agreeing to this to appease NBC but wont actually do the work. However, if this is part of the contract, they will have to do this. Let's hope its not part of the Zune firmware. Otherwise, it's going to slow down the Zune player and make it work as well as Microsoft Media player works. Yuck!

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