NBCU: SanDisk Fanfare = Our New iTunes Store
On the heels of NBC U's download deal with SanDisk, we spoke to NBC U president of digital distribution, Jean-Briac "JB" Perrette about what SanDisk offered that iTunes wouldn't and the prevailing view at NBC U on downloads vs. streaming.
Context & Ripple Effects
NBCU spent the fall of 2007 dismantling its iTunes relationship: Jeff Zucker publicly called the Apple deal rotten, and NBCU disputed Apple's account of a request to double wholesale prices before its contract expired on December 3, stripping The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, Bravo, USA and Telemundo shows from the store. Today's move answers what comes next — a distribution deal with SanDisk's Fanfare service starting in January, with digital distribution president JB Perrette framing pricing flexibility as exactly what Apple wouldn't give.
First-order effects
- SanDisk's Fanfare becomes the marquee legal home for NBCU's top shows — The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock — giving the MP3-player maker premium video content that Apple's store no longer carries.
- NBCU fans who bought episodes through iTunes lose that channel as of early December and must buy from Fanfare or wait for whatever NBC Direct offers.
Second-order effects
- Other networks will judge their own Apple relationships by whether flexible per-show pricing actually moves units off SanDisk devices — a live test of Apple's flat-pricing leverage.
- Hardware vendors are recast as storefronts: if Fanfare sells players on the strength of NBCU content, rival device makers need studio deals of their own to compete.
Third-order effects
- The episode signals a structural split in TV distribution: studios willing to walk away from the largest store to reclaim wholesale pricing power, fragmenting digital sales across multiple retail partners rather than one dominant gatekeeper.
- Perrette's framing of downloads versus streaming keeps both tracks alive alongside NBCU's Hulu-era VOD plans, leaving open which model ultimately carries the network's catalog.
The trend: TV studios are asserting pricing power over digital middlemen by distributing directly through hardware partners instead of accepting a single store's uniform terms.