NBCU's Zucker: iTunes Revenues Small; Apple Stiff on Pricing

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 30, 2007 - 7:50am.
NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker

New York - NBC Universal (NYSE: GE) CEO Jeff Zucker said on Monday that the company made just $15 million in revenue during the last year of its deal with Apple's (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes, and provided some details on the dispute that led to the pending severance of its ties with the service, Variety reported.

During an interview with Ken Auletta of the New Yorker at a Newhouse School benefit, Zucker said that NBCU's programming accounted for 40% of iTunes video sales.

In negotiations, NBCU wanted to experiment with $2.99 pricing on TV show downloads, and when Apple refused, the company instead asked for a percentage of Apple's hardware sales.

"We wanted to take one show, it didn't matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99," Zucker said.

"We made that offer for months and they said no… Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money. They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing."

The comments came as NBC Universal launched Hulu, its in-house Web video distribution joint venture with News Corp.

"We don't want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side," Zucker added.

Apple did not comment for the article.

 

Related Links:
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974910.html

http://www.hulu.com

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