All Things Digital

Apparently, NBC Universal doesn’t know that jumping into rebound relationships after a particularly painful breakup is rarely a good idea. After Apple tossed its fall TV lineup off iTunes in August, saying the two companies couldn’t agree on pricing, the broadcast network has been spitefully seeking out distribution deals wherever it can find them: Hulu. Then Amazon Unbox. The hilariously ill-conceived NBC Direct. And Netflix.

Now SanDisk. Today, NBC U said it would make its shows available on SanDisk’s recently launched Fanfare PC-to-TV video player service. Come January, consumers will be able to download episodes of NBC series they can no longer purchase on iTunes, and transfer them to their TVs via SanDisk’s TakeTV product.

“Fanfare is going to be an iTunes-like store for us,” NBC U’s president of digital distribution, Jean-Briac Perrette, told Silicon Alley Insider. But with one noteworthy difference: NBC U controls pricing. “The business model is one we like,” said Perrette. “It’s normal for content owners to control the wholesale price of their content. This is no different than any other wholesale relationship; it’s not different in the sense that Wal-Mart decides to price DVDs at a loss. Ultimately we still set the wholesale price.”

Boy, NBC Universal really has those broadcast TV blinders bolted on tight, doesn’t it? Just weeks after yanking its programs from Apple’s iTunes store, the company announced plans for a download service of its own, one that combines the convenience of the Internet with that mainstay of pre-DVR broadcast television, the unskippable advertisement. The service is called NBC Direct and it will offer free episodes from a selection of the network’s more popular shows for display with NBC’s proprietary Windows-only software.

“With the creation of this new service, we are acknowledging that now, more than ever, viewers want to be in control of how, when and where they consume their favorite entertainment,” said Vivi Zigler, executive vice president of NBC Digital Entertainment.

Ironic then, that commercials will be embedded in the programs and viewers will not be able to skip through them. Even more so that downloaded programs expire within a week of their original on-air date–not a week after they’re first downloaded. “Kind of like ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ” NBC Universal Television Group president Jeff Gaspin told the New York Times, “only I don’t think there would be any explosion and smoke.”