NBC Universal going Direct to consumers
Posted on September 20, 2007
Filed Under TV networks
Fresh from feuding with Apple’s iTunes Store, NBC Universal announced Wednesday that it would allow many of its hit shows to be downloaded via personal computer.
The new “NBC Direct” makes shows available for download the day they’re broadcast. Computer users can watch the programming over a seven-day period. After that, the files self-destruct, much like the short-lived disposable DVD rental scheme of a few years back.
“Kind of like ‘Mission: Impossible,’ only I don’t think there would be any explosion and smoke,” NBC Universal Television Group chieftain Jeff Gaspin told the New York Times.
Consumers can have the shows sent to them. They will contain ads that can’t be fast-forwarded past. NBC plans to offer downloads for pay next year, as it did via iTunes. The network recently put its new shows’ pilots on Amazon’s Unbox for free.
Service is set to roll out in October and November.
Sorry Mac users, you’ll have to wait in line — for the foreseeable, this deal is PC-Windows only.
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7 Responses to “NBC Universal going Direct to consumers”
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[...] 9/20: NBC Uni unveils NBC Direct, a service that allows consumers to download TV shows on the night they air. The files are good for [...]
Just a quick note here. It seems to me that when you start using a service that is cross-platform (iTunes), and later decide that it is not all that you expected it to be, you should NOT switch to a service that immediately alienates close to half of you potential viewership! (While it is true that Apple does not come close to half of the market share on computers, it can be argued that more than half of online viewers use a mac.)
Not a smart move on your part and it shows a severe lack of understanding of who your online viewers are. While I am a mac user, I get more than half of my online content from other sources besides iTunes. There are other options out there that a savy media group should have looked into.
[...] you hear that NBC is going to let consumers to download its TV shows on the night they’re broadcast? The files are free, but they self-destruct in seven days [...]
Hey Mark: I couldn’t agree more. NBC Universal is flopping around instead of going public with a coherent strategy. Looks like Steve Jobs really got under their skin.
This feels like some of that good GE management. Ignorance in action fueled by arrogance, buzzwords and whiteboards.
I do like the part where NBC Uni plans to push the shows to viewers, though. That feels new and smart.
They really have no grasp of the audience they’re dealing with. In the decade that I worked with new media in Hollywood, I never met a studio exec who got it. The guy at New Line came closest. (Go look at the studios’ crummy Web sites.)
It was hilarious to watch these highly paid suits (and some of my bosses) get woodies listening to slick young guys with nothing going but a stupid concept, a Blackberry and a laptop they could snap shut.
I was at the table for a Hollywood meeting with Steve Jobs once. He was pitching iTunes a year or so before launch. Talk about smartest guy in the room. … Freaking amazing.
Thanks for the comment. Looking forward to your next one … Glenn
Everyone seems to want their Ad revenue stream, and so I thought of NBC leaving iTunes, but alas, they are heading towards a disaster. I give it 36 hours before the “implosion” feature is hacked. However, I don’t seem them going back. Egos will causing a slow, flailing, digital death as they try one nightmarish scheme after another.
I found this comment on the Digg link to the N.Y. Times piece. From a guy named Otto:
“Who gives a crap? If I want their shows for free, I can already get them, in HD quality, without commercials, fully automatically (thanks to RSS feeds), in about half the time that it takes to download them using whatever service they come up with.
It’s called BitTorrent. They cannot win.”
[...] creates NBC Direct, which makes the network’s hit programs available for downloading the same day they’re [...]