This is bad news if you're a Battlestar Galactica fan like me. NBC-Universal owns the Sci-Fi channel.

Apparently NBC wanted to raise the prices on its shows, tried to strongarm Apple, and Apple decided to drop them. That shows some backbone, it's the first time they've shown me that they might be getting some of the soul they sold, back.

However, BSG was one of the things I was really glad to be able to buy via iTunes. I bought all the seasons, and watch them frequently on my iPod. It'll be a damn shame not to have the 2008 season on there too, and have to wait for the DVD. Or I'll see if I can take a burn from DVR and rip it and make it into MP4s. They'll have commercials, but c'est la vie.

If Apple caved, they say they would've had to charge something like $4.99 an episode for NBC content, which I can tell you right now, I wouldn't have paid. If it went up a buck I probably would have sucked it up for the sake of my favorite show... but I wouldn't have been happy.

I've griped previously about Apple for corporate greed issues like weaseling around with premium subscriber content and using P2P technology for downloads to nickel and dime their customers. Almost as if their marketeers have been sitting around going: "hmmmm, how can we get iTunes customers to go and REBUY all their songs at a higher price?"

Now, the content providers are getting greedy too, and instead of making everyone money, this kind of thing is going to force people into the arms of illegal downloads. That's my take on it.

The article at Playlistmag.com linked by MacCentral has this statement in quotes:

quote:

“NBC supplied iTunes with three of its 10 best selling TV shows last season, accounting for 30 percent of iTunes TV show sales.”

It doesn't say who the source is on this Apple or NBC or someone else but if correct 30 percent is a large share.