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iPhone and YouTube Trump iTunes and NBC

Posted September 4, 2007 6:00 AM by Paul Levinson
Categories: iTunes 

My take on the iTunes - NBC split, which has received so much press and attention: in a world in which more and more people see their television through YouTube, BiTorrent, and the like - all of which iPhones of course make easier - the availability of television on iTunes for any price doesn’t matter.  Whether $1.99 or $4.99, getting it for free is better.

Free television is course the way it has been for most of the history of television.  This notion of paying per episode is a misstep, I would say, made in the toddling adolescence of iTunes and the Internet.

Although NBC seems to be the more greedy here, by wanting to charge more for each download, NBC may in fact be more media-savvy than Apple - NBC already has a thriving web site with free downloads of a lot of its programs.  In fact, it put the remainder of its canceled Kidnapped on its network web site last Fall, and attracted a very loyal if small audience.  NBC may be getting tough with iTunes as part of a plan to build up its own web site.

Of course, not every NBC show is available on its web site - but neither was every show ever available on iTunes.  And when a show is not available that way, but still in demand, there is always BiTorrent and its cousins.

The bottom line is that the free web is melding with free television, is easier than ever to see and hear courtesy of iPhone, and iTunes may have outlived its usefulness as a TV medium.

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  1. TV is FREE?
    What the hell is that $50+ bill I get every month and those annoying commercials that show up every 15 minutes. The fact of the matter is that most people pay for TV twice! And because of limited time slots very good shows that could sustain themselves go off the air constantly.

    Lets take DirectTV as an example. They have a plus DVR HD package for $70/month. This gives me DVR abilities and a handful of HD channels but no true pay channels like HBO.

    Now between my wife and myself we have found that we watch a fair amount of TV. On the order of 24 new season broadcasts per year. With each one consisting of about 25 shows each that’s 600 shows and of course we watch a re-run of Mash or Star Trek or what ever now and again.

    Doing the math, with commercials I pay $840/year with cable and once the year is over I have nothing but memories and a strong desire to eat fast food and drink beer. At $2 per episode I would have paid $1200 on the iTMS for the same programing (most of which is there). But wait, that is not the whole picture. If I know I’m spending that much I can purchase $50 iTunes cards for $45 (10% savings off the top). And many of the shows offer season passes which drop per show prices to as low as $1.50 or down to only $1.80. I’ll split the difference very high and call it $1.75/show or $1050. Less the 10% and we are down to a $100 difference and at the end of the year I own these shows and can watch them on 5 computers as well as iPhones, iPods and stream them to my AppleTV.

    Sure, I loose my re-runs the first year but they will build up over time and iTunes offers older shows that I can use to back fill. I loose most sporting events and TV news coverage (but I get most of that from the net and podcasts) and I don’t end up with HD but I have substantially better than SD quality video.

    Also, I have to purchase about $100/worth of external hard drive storage this year and every year I need to purchase storage but who knows what a TB of storage will cost next year?

    So I don’t see TV as being free! and actually had this NBC thing not come up, I might have shut down my DirectTV HD DVR this year and switched to an All iTunes TV schedule.

    Posted by Doug Petrosky on September 4, 2007 5:41 PM

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