by Mike Shea on 28 August 2007
This morning I received word that NBC will no longer distribute shows through iTunes. This includes my favorite series of last year, Heroes.
Removing Heroes from iTunes is a mistake.
Last year, after surfing the iTunes homepage for a while, I finally purchased the season premier of Heroes. I enjoyed it and, after talking to my friends more about it, decided to watch more. I bought them from iTunes and watched them with my wife on Apple TV. We enjoyed the whole series and looked forward to the next season.
Now I hear that NBC pulled their content from iTunes. Why a company would decide to further limit the distribution of their product is beyond me.
I bought Heroes. I paid $2 an episode for it. I could have gotten it from BitTorrent. I could have copied it from a friend. I could have downloaded it from Usenet. I didn't. I wanted to do it the right way. I wanted to pay NBC for it and show them that downloading shows for a reasonable price on iTunes can work.
Now they pull the show as my reward. I don't have cable at home because paying $50 a month for poor content isn't a good use of my money. I don't watch shows over the air anymore, I watch them when I want to watch them.
Now I won't be watching Heroes and I won't be paying for it because NBC decided to cut off its distribution. Removing Heroes from iTunes doesn't help customers, it limits our choices.
NBC has shown that it doesn't care about its customers and it doesn't care about its product. That is poor business.