Tech Shout!

Just days after NBC Universal and Apple publicly called it quits over a ‘so-called’ price dispute; NBC has announced a new partnership with Amazon’s Unbox online service.

Interestingly, Unbox is none other than iTunes’ biggest rival as both sell downloadable content through their respective services.

According to NBC Universal, all its popular shows will no longer be available for download via Apple’s iTunes; instead they are immediately available on Amazon Unbox.

Some of the hit shows that are already available on Unbox are the Emmy Award-winning series ‘The Office’ and Emmy-nominated comedy ’30 Rock’.

Jean-Briac Perrette, President, NBC Universal Digital Distribution said, “With the addition of NBC Universal TV content to Amazon Unbox, fans now have the ultimate convenience for enjoying their favorite shows whenever or wherever they want. This further expands our longstanding relationship to bring a robust content offering to the marketplace in a variety of ways that will benefit the consumer and, at the same time, protects our content.”

Now that NBC Universal’s shows will not be available on Apple’s most popular iTunes service, you might be wondering the real reason behind the Apple-NBC spat.

Well, in a press statement that was released shortly after the New York Times announced the news, Apple said that it would not be selling NBC TV shows for the upcoming season as the company declined to pat more than double the wholesale price for each NBC TV episode.

Thus, it can be concluded that Apple wanted to increase the price per NBC episode from $1.99 to $4.99. Well, that didn’t seem to work out for NBC nor for Apple.

Interestingly, just a few hours later, NBC Universal responded to Apple’s statement saying that the problem had nothing to do with the price!

Cory Shields, EVP Communications of NBC Universal, said in a public statement, “We never asked to double the wholesale price for our TV shows. In fact, our negotiations were centered on our request for flexibility in wholesale pricing, including the ability to package shows together in ways that could make our content even more attractive for consumers.”

NBC Universal is now selling its TV episodes via Amazon Unbox for the same price of $1.99.Thus, the Apple-NBC spat was never about prices.