universal, nbc, general electric, vivendi. not renewing contracts, instead, month to month. no commitment. never said they'll stop selling on the iTunes Store, just that they won't be beholden to Apple for a year, or years long contract. it doesn't necessarily mean that universal music or TV shows will go away from the iTunes Store, just that you aren't guaranteed having them around, say for an entire season. maybe it's not such a bad thing after all? are there any bonuses for a long term deal for the content companies? does it predefine revenue streams? are they guaranteed money? if apple were to tank, or someone else were to come around with a better deal, wouldn't it make more sense for the content owners to take their content elsewhere? and not be locked in for a given amount of time? kind of makes sense to me. it just wouldn't make sense for them to just pull out of a revenue stream completely. Doesn't take effort, or too much effort. No manufacturing costs. Seems like a money spigot. Maybe the contracts with Apple involved non-competes. And without a contract and non-competes, they can sell their content anywhere and everywhere, including on the [[iTunes Store]]. So actually, they can make more money. That makes even more sense. This is all good unless they pull their content and don't make it available anywhere or in a format that decreases sales. Makes all the sense in the world if they can sell it and make more money than they do now. Profit is the key and the king. update: NBC wanted more money. Apple said no. Apple says screw you to NBC, we won't offer any of your shows anymore. NBC is left with what? A spigot that got turned off. I wonder how they'll explain that to G.E. and Vivendi. Oh, we were making money from iTunes, so we wanted to make more money, and we asked for it and threatened to not sign a contract, and Apple said no, so we won't make any money, no money at all, from iTunes at all. Because we'd make more money from advertising by having people come to the website to view the TV shows they would have purchased. except for those people who bought shows to watch on the go. I wonder if NBC will provide downloadable episodes via another method, and if that will be available for iPods, iTunes, Apple TV. I'm hoping NBC was bluffing and whoever tried to bluff gets canned, cause they just got their bluff called by Apple. Cause according to apple, http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/08/31itunes.html, it's NBC's greed that caused it.