John Gruber named Jeff Zucker Jackass of the Week for saying:
Apple “destroyed the music business in terms of pricing” and will invariably do the same to the online video business.
John points out that before iTunes, people were used to downloading music for free. And now that NBC has pulled their shows from iTunes, that’s what people will be doing with TV shows.
It’s important to note that because of their current strategy of releasing shows for free on their websites (and on Hulu in the future), the networks are reinforcing the idea that their shows should be free. If anyone is devaluing their product, it’s the networks.
I mean, hardcore web nerds were already aware of torrent sites, etc., but NBC is advertising the fact that you shouldn’t pay for TV shows. They’re paying to encourage users to devalue their product.
How strange is that?
The only upside is that their behavior will inevitably hasten their demise - something we can all be happy about.