Yesterday NBC said that it wouldn’t extend its contract with iTunes, as Apple is not ready to change their pricing policies. NBC’s agreement with Apple will end in December. The question then was would Apple keep selling NBC TV shows like they are doing with Universal Music. NBC is a Universal groups company so it looked like they will keep doing the same thing they did with music. But Apple has had it with Universal Group and it is pulling the plug on NBC in September rather than waiting till December. According to the statement released by Apple it will not be selling NBC television shows for the upcoming television season on its online iTunes Store. The move follows NBC's decision to not renew its agreement with iTunes after Apple declined to pay more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode, which would have resulted in the retail price to consumers increasing to $4.99 per episode from the current $1.99. Apple's agreement with NBC ends in December. Since NBC would withdraw their shows in the middle of the television season, Apple has decided to not offer NBC TV shows for the upcoming television season beginning in September.
"We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes. "We hope they will change their minds and offer their TV shows to the tens of millions of iTunes customers."
In May when Apple and Universal Music were in talks for extending their agreement, it failed because Apple was not ready to increase the price of newly released songs from $0.99 and Universal wanted to charge more for newly released songs. But since iTunes has more than 80% market share in online music business and are the 3rd biggest reseller after Wal-Mart and Best Buy, Universal wasn’t able to do much. Though Universal Music didn’t sign the agreement with Apple, they kept selling their music through iTunes. Now with this NBC agreement problem it looks like Universal is getting too greedy because no way am I going to pay $5 for one episode of a TV show.