Earlier this week, negotiations between NBC and Apple deteriorated resulting in NBC choosing not to renew their contract with Apple to distribute their shows in the I-tunes store after the end of the year.  Although the contract does not end until the end of the year, Apple added fuel to the fire by canceling distribution of the first half of the season via the I-tunes store. 

One or two days later NBC and Amazon announced that NBC’s programing would be available via Amazon’s Unboxed player.  The unboxed software currently does not support the mac platform.  All in all, a huge slap in the face to Apple and a big loss for us. 

I manage all of my music and video in the I-tunes and I will be really annoyed later this month if I have to buy the Office from Amazon and watch my shows using their clunky player! 

It is not perfectly clear why negotiations between Apple and NBC broke down; Apple indicated that NBC wanted to increase the price while NBC responded that it was a bundling and cross-promotion issue.  Since the shows on Amazon are still 1.99, it sounds like it may be a classic case of Apple pushing too much.

I don’t feel that I can only blame Apple since a contract with Amazon was so quickly implemented.  It is clear that NBC had been working in advance with Amazon further indicating their desire to diversify the market.

We’ll just have to see how the story develops in the coming weeks but I really hope that Apple will take action to get the Office back into the I-tunes store!

UPDATE

It seems that Apple my be trying to lower the price of the TV shows sold on I-tunes to 99 cents per episode……Interesting……

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