We’re not big fans of NBC since they’ve turned into the neighborhood bully. When they’re not using their brute force to make a DVD format war, they are taking all their content off YouTube and iTunes to put onto their own site.
You can stream episodes on NBC.com if you like to watch commercials. And by commercials, we mean that each episode usually plays the same commercial over and over and over….
You can download some episodes on NBC direct. This requires a download which is essentially spyware. You can only download select episodes which are only good for a limited time and you cannot upload the content to portable devices. Oh yeah, and that only works on PC’s running Internet Explorer.
There’s the mysterious “HULU” site which we think will never start up. Here you can view videos from NBC and Fox in a similar fashion as the NBC.com stream. Once again, commercials play a huge part.
During all of this you may have noticed there are no more NBC shows on iTunes already. NBC and Apple did not renew their contract after NBC allegedly wanted to raise the price by $2-4 and force bundled shows onto viewers. Apple, wisely, said “no” and now NBC is showing the signs of a bad decision.
This is because the writers strike has halted all new episodes across the board for all networks and movies. People look to watch alternative shows and now that NBC has burnt their bridges with such outlets of iTunes, where viewers could once download and watch entire seasons of shows, the network is admitting they are losing money.
This week NBC announced they are refunding ad revenues after failing to meet ratings for advertisers. With no end in sight for the writers strike it looks like it will be a tough Christmas for the Peacock.
In ending, we’d just like to point out (hopefully to anyone working at NBC) that the holidays are here and we’re packing our iPods up with videos from the iTunes store in preparation for our individual flights. Just because NBC and their affiliates are not present on iTunes doesn’t mean we’re not gonna use the gift cards we’ve both already gotten. There are plenty of other shows to choose from.
Not too smart, NBC. You all didn’t think this one out too far, did you?
[...] NBC deal with Netflix is another middle finger to Apple, which NBC has fought with for years over the prices of their shows in the iTunes store. NBC claims that the value of their shows are [...]