Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced “one more thing” would be the video iPod with ABC content available through iTunes 6.
Will ABC president Bob Iger have the video section of iTunes all to himself for much longer? Newsweek reported that CBS and NBC have begun to discuss the prospect of programming for the small screen too.
NBC Universal Digital Media president Deborah Reif said in a statement to Newsweek that they were “having conversations with many top players.” Meanwhile, a CBS spokesperson said pretty much the same thing: “Obviously, we are talking to all the imaginable players about taking our content and putting it on emerging platforms.”
The ABC/Disney/Pixar content on iTunes didn’t arrive there by accident. “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way,” Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, and people definitely know politics plays a huge role in Hollywood.
Since the spring, in the wake of the fallout between Jobs and then-Disney head Michael Eisner over Pixar film distribution, the working Disney and Pixar relationship thawed. Jobs spoke well of Iger during a Pixar conference call with analysts earlier in the year; Disney’s studio chairman Richard Cook spoke well of Jobs publicly in May.
Between CBS and NBC, CBS seems the more likely of the two to make a video appearance on iTunes 6. Recently the company disclosed a deal where audio podcasts from shows like “60 Minutes” and “Survivor” would appear on iTunes.
CBS has been very active in embracing digital media, and offering RSS feeds and podcasts. Its CBS News has been moving to offer news on an online-first basis; the company sees a shift in users going to the Internet instead of cable for breaking news and wants to follow them.
David Utter is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
