NBC Universal Unhappy With iTunes Profit

More dirt has emerged regarding the Apple/Universal deal that turned rotten. According to an article in Variety, the deal went south when NBC Universal wanted to raise the price of hot properties like "Heroes" by a dollar, to $2.99, in addition to requesting a cut of Apple's hardware profits. On both counts, Apple refused. And the head honcho of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker, was none too happy: "Apple sold millions of dollars worth of hardware off the back of our content and made a lot of money."

Less than satisfied with his company's cut of Apple's pie--$15 million in revenue over the last year--NBC Universal opted to pull out of iTunes and spend who-knows-how-much to launch its own online video site called Hulu, which is headed into beta this week. "We don’t want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side." Hey, anytime someone wants to throw $15 million in pennies my way, please go right ahead.