There has been escalating disputes with Apple Inc. and NBC Universal over the pricing of television shows. On Friday Apple had announce that they would not sell any of NBC’s programs this fall season on iTunes.

However, NBC had earlier told Apple that they would not allow its programs to be sold on iTunes at the end of the year. NBC Universal accounts for about 40 of all video downloads happening on iTunes.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of iTunes had said, “We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase. We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers.”

Apple is being cut throat and decided not to discontinue NBC’s programs during the middle of the upcoming seasons, but rather to cut them off right now before their new fall episodes premier next month. This could really hurt NBC which would really use the buzz provided by internet sales and money.

Companies including ABC, CBS, Fox, and the CW along with 50 other cable networks, have deals to sell fall shows on iTunes. Each episode costing $1.99. NBC wanted Apple to pay more than double its wholesale price which would result in the retail price increasing up to $4.99 for NBC shows.

Tags: Business, Apple Inc., Apple, NBC, iTunes, Marketing

If you liked this post please consider adding us to your RSS Feed