The CEO of major US TV network NBC said yesterday that: "Apple has destroyed the music business". Jeff Zucker accused Apple of employing a digital business model which turns the revenue of record labels "from dollars into pennies".
According to Jupiter research analyst David Schatsky, whilst being quizzed by US journalist Ken Auletta, Zucker said that Apple will "do the same" to the online video business unless someone stops it.
iTunes killing media companies?
NBC recently withdrew its TV shows from iTunes, ending a licensing deal it had made with Apple a year earlier. It's now launching its own video site Hulu.com which carries full-length episodes of all its shows.
"We wanted to take one show, it didn't matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99," he said. "We made that offer for months and they said no."
Zucker also said that media companies should get a cut of Apple's hardware sales because he says it's their music and video content which drives Apple's sales.
"Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content, and made a lot of money," Zucker said. "They did not want to share in what they were making off the hardware or allow us to adjust pricing.
"We don't want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side," he said.
NBC's video archive reportedly accounted for 40 per cent of all Apple's iTunes video sales in the US.
