Attention, media company CEOs: You never come out looking good when you bash Apple for not sharing iPod revenue looking with you. Do makers of CD drives pay you royalties? Does my broken SPORTS Walkman owe you cash because it wouldn’t play music with out your content. The latest victim of this fallacy is NBC President Jeff Zucker, best known for taking the channel from No. 1 to No. 4 while head of programming. Variety reports his absurd comments at Syracuse University yesterday.
“Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money,” Zucker said. “They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.”
How awful for you! I’m so sad that Apple didn’t want to provide you with revenue that you didn’t earn! Not to mention which, there is no one on the planet who bought an iPod just to watch videos on it, let alone just to watch NBC TV shows. And the vast majority of music gets sold through non-iTunes channels. The iTunes Store has contributed to iPod growth, but then again, “The Office” found an audience largely because of iTunes. Good luck with Hulu, Jeff.
Does anyone have sympathy for comments like these?
Zucker says Apple deal rotten – Entertainment News, Technology News, Media – Variety
Thanks, Buzz!
30 responses to “NBC President Slams Apple, Making This Much Sense: Zero.”
What a crock. I wonder if Zucker will be going after Sony/Samsung/Hitachi/etc next for a cut of their TV sales. After all these companies have been selling billions of dollars of TV ‘off the backs’ of NBC content for a lot longer than Apple.
How much money did the entertainment companies make off of turntables, tape player, VCRs, CD players, DVD players, etc.?? When Best Buy sells you your first Blu-Ray DVD player and then sends you over to the movie section to buy new DVDs do they have to share in the money they made on the DVD player?
F’ing ridiculous. Zucker’s statements show he is an anachronism to the industry.
Completely agree with the post and the above comments. Consumer electronics makers like Apple could just as well argue that content creators are making to much money off the backs of its devices and distribution system. If Zucker thinks there’s more money in devices, he should get to work building his own iPod killer. Good luck Zucker.
If device makers start giving in to the content companies (hello MS Zune? Are you listening?), it’ll be the beginning of the end of both creativity and innovation. Companies like NBC and Disney aren’t satisfied with their life + 75 year monopoly protected and paid for with taxpayer dollars. So now they are trying to steal money from device makers, and force them to build usage restrictions into every electronic device sold. I swear these guys would happily claim ownership over our thoughts and words if they thought there was half a chance that they could get away with it.
Does this mean that NBC is going to start manufacturing TVs soon?
Yeah, I’m sure it’s rough for Zucker having all that money taken off his back. I mean, he can probably only get like 6 boats now. And the Actors! Who is going to tell the actors that they’re only making $3/4mil. per show, because the ipod they all bought is taking up their profits?
The drek and drivel that constitutes primetime network “content” these days is consistently being shoveled at us by the likes of this unimaginative, overpaid, shortsighted obsolete suit-wearing dinosaur who, mysteriously still HAS a job at NBCU after taking them from #1 to #4.
Yo, Tyrannosaurus Rex Zucker, digital content distribution is your asteroid landing in the Yucatan. Adapt or die!
That house in the Hamptons and that limo you ride in everyday are endangered species, Jeffrey boy!
Peace.
Not only a ‘tard, but an arrogant ‘tard. Apple makes money “off of the back” of its own R&D, not the content. If content was all that mattered, then MP3 players would not have taken off at all, and people would still be exclusively using means of distribution that the networks and music labels still control.
And these morons actually think that people are going to want to download DRM crippled shows that expire WITH FORCED COMMERCIALS SPREAD THROUGHOUT. This is the age of TiVo and iTunes, nobody is going to want to sit there at their computer through a normal length commerical break. No gratitude to Apple at all for being the ONLY company that has made profitable video downloads to date. Don’t these people know that they are competing against BitTorrent? Apple successfully does that with a flawless, easy, smooth, cheap, system. NBC is screwed.
Were they even a company before the invention of devices that displayed or played back their media? Come to think of it, they should be paying everyone else! They wouldn’t be making a dime were it not for the devices invented by others, manufactured by others, supported by others, enhanced by others.
Yeah, NBC/Universal is demonstrating a unique ability to run away from what’s good for them. My favorite remark of theirs concerned MTV, and how Universal Music group rued giving their videos away for free because they could have made “millions of dollars” from charging for them in the early days.
Because, you know, MTV was so hyper-profitable in the early eighties. That’s why the VJ’s made so much money. And the poor record companies – if only all that TV exposure had somehow translated into record sales! Oh yeah, it resulted in HUGE record sales.
Well, NBC/Universal will do fine with their new business model – all their profits will come form lawsuits for a while.
Yeah, NBC/Universal is demonstrating a unique ability to run away from what’s good for them. My favorite remark of theirs concerned MTV, and how Universal Music group rued giving their videos away for free because they could have made “millions of dollars” from charging for them in the early days.
Because, you know, MTV was so hyper-profitable in the early eighties. That’s why shows looked so good! And the poor record companies – if only all that TV exposure had somehow translated into record sales! Oh yeah, it resulted in HUGE record sales.
Well, NBC/Universal will do fine with their new business model – all their profits will come form lawsuits for a while.
Hahahaha. What a tool.
oh so the money i paid for my new tv doesn’t go to nbc? well gee that the only reason i bought it. he shot himself in the foot by pulling out of iTunes and now he’s just rationalizing his actions by some nonsensical .. wow i don’t even know what to call it. is he schizophrenic or something?
This asshat and and dinosaurs like him simply prove that they and the networks they work for are greedy and still don’t understand what their customers want.
Whatta clown…
let us not forget. this is the guy that created Joey.