RSSNBCU: We Made Only $15 Million Off iTunes
By the Betanews Staff | Published October 29, 2007, 5:04 PM
No doubt in an effort to build up its own recently launched Hulu service, NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker criticized Apple yet again over its unwillingness to work with the company.
At a Syracuse University benefit, Zucker claimed that NBCU had only made $15 million off of its video deal with iTunes, and said it was unfair that Apple had made millions off of iPod sales and was not sharing any of the revenues with content providers.
"Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money," Zucker told attendees according to a story in Variety. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing." NBCU sees this as almost a crime considering the studio's content counted for four out of every ten videos sold on the service. Apple had no immediate comment on Zucker's latest comments.
Having used Hulu, and seeing how innovative it actually is... I am curious how this is going to be a profit maker for them. Maybe with Ads? The traditional Telemarketing campaign except online? There are commercial break points in the stream, but most of the 1801 streams are commercial free.They even allow us to embed them into our own web-pages if we want to organize it how we wish or catalog a fan archive page. all the content remains on the Hulu system however.
I see this in a way very good for online marketing, cause the # of views will be able to generate more accurate ratings IMHO for the networks to gauge what is the more popular programing.
last night Heroes, & Journeyman were on Hulu within moments of it being on air. it was about a 10 min lag time for me... I was watching it on TV and seeing it streaming online...
The Embedded interface could not be easier to use. I admit the cataloging DB is a little hard to figure out, but at this point if you see 1, you can see all 1801 streams on the same page... Its all in how you program it to function...
Even more interesting if you program a client side viewer you do not even need a web-page to host a link to the stream. Just embed it into your program and plug in the Hulu number for the show you want, and bingo your watching it instantly... No downloading for 45 mins from torrents, no breakup streams that you have to wait on to catch up... It just works very good...
The next step in this on demand system that I think Hulu is working towards, is a set top box similar to a PVR, except it will stream content directly to your TV from the Internet with a click... Think of how Hotels stream first run content to their rooms for their guests... This is very similar...
The only thing they limit. Obviously is recording and saving that content... But when it stream so fast, there is a serious question on if you would need to ever save it at all? Prob for those with limited bandwidth. yes Downloading from a torrent may still be preferable. But I have to admit this Hulu system is VERY impressive.
For those interested in the embedded code the link below will take you to my testbed page that I am using to beta test the Hulu system:
http://www2.webng.com/htingram/htmledit.htm
That embed code will stream last nights Journeyman to any web-page, even one that is NOT hosted ANYWHERE... meaning just save the code to a test file on your computer, and rename it to a .htm file and open it ON YOUR computer with IE or Firefox and the stream will come to you in an instant.
If you want Heroes from last night that Hulu number is 1799... (my site you can change the number and it will load the that hulu stream to play instantly). This is a testbed while I play with the system. Its not a permanent host location... But as far as I can tell the host is not seeing added traffic in the analytics to the site, proving that it is all direct from Hulu. So if you want the embedded code get it now and make your own local host files... That one is just being used to demonstrate it and show you the code easily so you can play with it yourselves...
Try it out guys. its so freaking cool to see this technology Finally emerging to a new level that is legal and with the support of the networks!!!
For more info later see the http://blog.hulu.com/ page.
Oh I did find one other limitation that needs to be addressed here for you guys. IF your outside the US. Yea your gonna have problems viewing the streams. They only allow you to view them in the region they are ment for... Similar to the BBCs UK internet streams... So yea.. IN those kind of cases Torrents is still THE way to go. but beyond that. If you have internet access and are in the US, Hulu is fantastic...
Its worth noting as well though that BBC UK streams can be viewed via proxies and it will work in other countries... If you want to view Hulu in other countries while abroad, I would imagine a proxy connection to your Home machine will allow you to stream the file to you... I may be wrong, but I think its possible... I have not tried it yet.. I'll leave that to the innovative betanews community to attempt for their situations.
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|"We Made Only $15 Million Off iTunes"
Mr Zucker, I have your solution:
A. Make music|video that doesn't suck
B. Sell it at a cost that isn't insane (Under $0.50 US per song, and $1.00 US per video)
'nuff said
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|Every time when there is a bad press against Apple, Beatnews make the headline so negative and childish again the party.
Great job.
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|Im sure it was ALL NBC that spurred sales too.
/sarcasm
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|Just another whiny billionaire.
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|Logic Newsflash for Jeff Zucker:
If you are a content provider, then you will make money on content provided.
If you are a hardware provider, then you will make money on hardware provided.
You're a friggen content provider, not a hardware provider, therefore, you will make money on content not hardware.
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|sniff .......sniff
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|If they want a portion of Ipod sales because it is playing their content, why aren't they going after TV makers for playing their content?
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|LOL That's freaking $15mil in your pocket, buddy. Stop biting the freaking hand that feeds your butt.
I hope this Hulu or whatever the hell it's called flops like a dead friggin fish after they put in $100 into the POS.
PS- You want APPLE to pay YOU royalties for THEIR IDEA?! Are you retarded?! These people, in addition to the RIAA/MPAA need to get their heads out of their asses, honestly.
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|This is with out a doubt one of the most stupid things I have heard in quite a while. While I hate iPods and more to the point iTunes its a great mechanism for selling and distribution. What NBC is thinking is beyond me. I really wish there was a website petition to let NBC know that a good portion of people think they are retards. Which they obviously are.
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|Not that I think NBC is right here but you know Apple is getting a s*** load of money for every AT&T contract sold with their iPhone. So it's working the other way around for Apple.
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|So? Who cares?
If I made an invention, *I* get the profit from it. You have no right to come complain b/c I made a DEAL with you THAT YOU SIGNED to allow me to allow your content to be placed on the device.
PS- They're using APPLE'S upload bandwith, so the only freaking thing they had to pay for was the initial upload and the transcoding of the file (which, I imagine, is done by Apple anyways, so they literally had to rip a raw image and hit "send". HARDLY difficult/money intensive on their part).
My response (if I were apple): Blow me.
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|What the heck is wrong with these people. Next thing you're going to hear is that these people want a percentage of sales of Apple's total revenue. I mean after all we play videos on their os too right. Why not ask for a percentage of Microsft's revenue as well, I mean computers are used to transfer the content. Why not take it one step further and say a percentage of ISP revenue should go to them as well. We use them to transfer/download and stream content.
Now each time you transfer it to or from your computer to a mp3 player charge a fee, now make it so it costs money for a backup.
Next thing will be a tax on recordable media's that go to them
Where will it end with these people.
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|I gotta say, well, that's 15M more than you'll be getting now. I've downloaded a few episodes from iTunes that I've missed, or realized it was a show I wanted to start watching a few episodes into the season. And I only did so because it was quick, easy, painless AND I could watch it on my iPhone when I had the time. I don't care what service NBC puts up, it won't meet most of those requirements (They are raising the price, most likely dropping the quality, making it difficult with more proprietary DRM, *AND* I can't watch it on my iPhone). No thanks, I don't want whatever service you are going to be offering NBC.
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|Exactly.
Actually I, now, absolutely refuse to download any songs unless it's Amazon.com or Walmart.com's MP3 downloads. I don't believe in DRM, and I don't share my MP3 content (and am absolutely confident in saying that). What I download is not shared.
That being said, I hope NBC loses a s*** ton of money from this idiotic move on their part, and come crying back after they realize what they've done was exactly the wrong thing to do.
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|Sure - 4 / 10 videos were from NBC - but what % of overall sales comprise video downloads vs. music downloads?
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|HAHAHAH!
Proof that all big business suffer the same issues as gambling addicts.
It's not about how much you made, its about how much you didn't.
Does NBC get a percentage of every Sony Triniton ever sold? How about the Walkman?
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|Someone call NBC a WAAAAAAAAAAAAmbulance.
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|Why should apple share the revenue from the iPod to NBC or any other content company? Apple made the iPod not them. The content companies didn't make the iPod (as far as anyone knows). Just the media that is playable on it. The iPod is apples product, not NBCs. Maybe NBC should look at their content and question why more ppl are not purchasing it.
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|But $4 a episode??? I dont think so. He makes an extremely bad argument. I have only used my ipod to play videos a hand full of times, heck I can safely say less then 10.
People dont download to play on an ipod for the most part, even a study found that only a small percentage of ipod users watch videos on their ipods.
I bet most of the people who buy these episodes are PC users, many of which own no apple products, in which case it has nothing to do with apple hardware.
Link to article about video use on ipod.
http://arstechnica.com/n...post/20061120-8253.html
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|This is true.
I only use it to watch a film while on a budget airline flight with no movies.
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|I have to date watch only 1 video on my ipod excluding music videos I had off dvd's, and 300 which i transfered from my dvd. I have yet to watch any video I have downloaded from itunes. I watch them on my laptop. Any reason NBC had so much for sales is cause of heroes and a few select titles that are worth watching. The rest of their line up is old crap that only is downloaded once in a blue moon.
So lets see 80.1 Hours of tv Shows
2 hours of Video
3 hours of music videos. And out of that 85 hours, only 5 of it is stuff i put on my ipod from purchased dvds from stores not itunes. I couldn't imagine watching tv shows on my ipod. I bought it for it but then never do it hardly cause of the size. maybe if I had a 80GB touch ipod with the larger screen i would.
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|NBC is being really unprofessional about this. Seems like they are intentionally trying to burn this bridge beyond repair.
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