NBC Turns to Amazon

NBC Universal is not wasting any time sulking over their recent failure to reach a deal with Apple Inc. that would see the company offer shows from their hit fall lineup on the iTunes website. NBC Universal officially announced that all of the episodes for the new fall season will be made available on the Amazon Unbox digital downloading service.

Amazon Inc. and NBC Universal have signed a lucrative contract that will see NBC television shows selling at $1.99 per episode on Unbox. New episodes are promised to be consistently uploaded onto the website the day after they air on network television. Amazon customers will also be given the option of purchasing an entire season of a particular show for one set price. (Source: abcnews.go.com)

NBC is even offering free pilot episodes for some of their new fall shows prior to the scheduled air date. All NBC content can be played, commercial-free, directly onto any computer monitor, iPod screen or even television sets that come equipped with a web-enabled TiVo set-top box.

Recently, Apple announced that they would not be selling any more NBC programs through their iTunes downloading service. The contract between NBC and Apple is set to officially expire at the end of the year and the reason for the split is linked to Apple claiming that NBC demanded to raise the prices for the content they provided. NBC vehemently denied these allegations and supported their position by agreeing to sell their new fall episodes for the standard $1.99 price tag on Amazon Unbox. (Source: latimes.com)

NBC Universal representatives have stood by their initial argument, saying that the company had merely wanted to offer packaged programming in different ways at different prices.

While Apple did not have the patience to sit around and listen to these packaging plans, Amazon has been more than willing to do whatever it takes to establish a long-lasting relationship with NBC.