January 21, 2008

Is NBC Universal Planning A Return To iTunes?

Two separate statements made by NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker and Apple's Steve Jobs in the Financial Times and Business Week respectively indicate that the relationship between the two is returning to good terms and NBC could make a return to the iTunes platform in the future. Remember back in August of 2007, NBC pulled their content off of iTunes due to pricing and DRM-related disagreements with Apple. A war of word ensued over the folowing months, and only in the past couple of days has any indication been apparent that the relationship between the two companies is improving.

Zucker states in a Financial Times interview that:

"'We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple.' He then unexpectedly adds, 'We're great fans of Steve Jobs.' No telling what has caused the turnabout. Perhaps the writers strike gave both parties time to reflect on their mounting lost revenue."

Jobs seems to have reciprocated the positive feelings in a January 16th Business Week interview saying:

"“We’ll put it back together on the TV thing. Everybody lost (when Zucker pulled his content off iTunes). But NBC is a great company, and Apple is a great company,” neither of which make a habit of ignoring their customers’ desires, he said. “Fortunately,” he half-joked, “there was a writers’ strike, so it didn’t matter as much as it might have.”

Sounds like at two media execs are thankful for the Writer's Strike. At least they'll be able to blame the poor numbers related to their poor business decision on something other than themselves.

Update: Paidcontent.org indicates that the Financial Times quote by Jeff Zucker was in the context of NBC allowing movie rentals on the iTunes movies service mainly because of Apple's allowance of variable pricing, one of the issues that contributed from the studio pulling their TV shows from iTunes.
Via Slashdot