iTunes Store to Stop Selling NBC Television Shows

Apple announced today that they won’t be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its iTunes store. They said NBC demanded a high price for their TV shows.

Apple and NBC decided to part and not share the TV shows beginning next year. NBC said earlier they and Apple didn’t agree with the price terms but no clear explanations were given for the cancellation. Today Apple announced the reason why, NBC demanded a high price for their show in iTunes. NBC wanted Apple to pay double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, it wanted $4.99 per Episode compared to the old rate $1.99 per Episode. While ABC, FOX, CBS, CW and more than 50 cable networks have agreed to sell at the same rate $1.99 per Episode for the upcoming season, NBC is the lone company that wants more for its show.

"We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes.

Cue told Marketwatch.com that he hopes NBC will change their mind and still agree to sell their TV shows at the same old rate. Apple decided to cancel their NBC agreement earlier, which ends in December, but since many shows run beyond the month of December, they didn’t want to sell only partial number of shows to their customers. I checked iTunes; they only have old NBC shows, which will be removed very soon. It is a shame NBC don’t offer Office, Heroes and other popular shows in iTunes, NBC will lose a big audience and there will be more illegal copying and downloading in the internet if NBC still insists on charging a high price for their TV Shows. With iPhone release, many customers would have bought more new shows from NBC, now they will buy shows from other networks.