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- NBC Direct: Giving iTunes Some Competition
NBC Direct: Giving iTunes Some Competition
- By Lisa Weinberger
- Published 11/15/2007
- Industry News , Internet
- Unrated
What is this NBC Direct Stuff?
Back on September 19th, 2007 NBC dropped its
contract with iTunes and announced the launch of its new service called NBC
Direct. NBC Direct is suppose to be
NBC’s answer to iTunes, and even might hold some competition for them. The service provides a beta download for
Window’s based PC’s that allows you to watch your favorite NBC shows for
free. Currently, they are offering five
shows for download including 30 Rock, Bionic Woman, Friday Night Lights, Life,
and The Office. Soon they will start
adding on more, but since the service just launched they decided to test it out
with those five.
For most of us iTunes was a gift sent from heaven. Who would have thought 10 years ago that today you’d be able download your favorite episodes of The Office or pick up your favorite new bands album without even standing up? For a while all was going smoothly for Apple and their iTunes empire. They were selling nearly everything they could off of their service, and taking it to the bank. That is until NBC decide that they weren’t getting enough of the pie. Jeff Zucker of NBC Universal claims that they didn’t renew their contract with iTunes due Apple’s non-flexibility on pricing, and because Apple wouldn’t allow them a cut of their hardware sales even though Apple was selling millions in hardware off of NBC content. Zucker stated that NBC’s programming made up 40% of iTunes video sales while NBC only netted $15 million
in revenue. Sure, that sounds like a good chunk of
change, but not when you’re a media empire making up 40% of iTunes video
sales. Hence, we see the launch of NBC
Direct.
Well, the catch is a small one, but it’s there. The free downloadable shows off of NBC Direct come with advertisement support that has to be watched by the viewer. Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be watched, but it has to play through the entire ad. These ads are really only about 30 seconds long though, and are once every 5-10 minutes or so, depending on the show length I imagine. Thus, for a free episode you’ve got to sit through an advertisement for pasta, but it makes for some time to grab a nice cold drink, or get a snack. Of course, you could just “Pause” the player as well, but what’s the fun in that?
Once the episode is downloaded you only have 48 hours to watch it. You can renew your subscription after 48 hours, but otherwise it automatically deletes from your computer. So far, NBC is posting new episodes of these shows for seven days, and then they are no longer available for viewing on the service. Therefore, you have to watch the episode within 7 days of its airing or you don’t get to watch it for free or at all for that matter.
The service includes some other limitations too as it is only available for Windows based systems with Internet Explorer. It does not support Mac, Firefox, or Linux at this point. NBC’s plan is to add Mac support by early 2008 and find support for Firefox by the end of this year.
Why Did NBC Back Out of iTunes?
For most of us iTunes was a gift sent from heaven. Who would have thought 10 years ago that today you’d be able download your favorite episodes of The Office or pick up your favorite new bands album without even standing up? For a while all was going smoothly for Apple and their iTunes empire. They were selling nearly everything they could off of their service, and taking it to the bank. That is until NBC decide that they weren’t getting enough of the pie. Jeff Zucker of NBC Universal claims that they didn’t renew their contract with iTunes due Apple’s non-flexibility on pricing, and because Apple wouldn’t allow them a cut of their hardware sales even though Apple was selling millions in hardware off of NBC content. Zucker stated that NBC’s programming made up 40% of iTunes video sales while NBC only netted $15 million
in revenue. Sure, that sounds like a good chunk of
change, but not when you’re a media empire making up 40% of iTunes video
sales. Hence, we see the launch of NBC
Direct.
So what’s The Catch?
Well, the catch is a small one, but it’s there. The free downloadable shows off of NBC Direct come with advertisement support that has to be watched by the viewer. Well, it doesn’t necessarily have to be watched, but it has to play through the entire ad. These ads are really only about 30 seconds long though, and are once every 5-10 minutes or so, depending on the show length I imagine. Thus, for a free episode you’ve got to sit through an advertisement for pasta, but it makes for some time to grab a nice cold drink, or get a snack. Of course, you could just “Pause” the player as well, but what’s the fun in that?
Once the episode is downloaded you only have 48 hours to watch it. You can renew your subscription after 48 hours, but otherwise it automatically deletes from your computer. So far, NBC is posting new episodes of these shows for seven days, and then they are no longer available for viewing on the service. Therefore, you have to watch the episode within 7 days of its airing or you don’t get to watch it for free or at all for that matter.
The service includes some other limitations too as it is only available for Windows based systems with Internet Explorer. It does not support Mac, Firefox, or Linux at this point. NBC’s plan is to add Mac support by early 2008 and find support for Firefox by the end of this year.
