NBC Jumps Into SanDisk's Fanfare TV Download Service [Digital Downloads]
NBC Jumps Into SanDisk's Fanfare TV Download Service — Though you can no longer buy episodes of "The Office," "Heroes" or "30 Rock" on iTunes, you will be able to purchase them in January from SanDisk's Fanfare service.
Context & Ripple Effects
NBC spent the fall of 2007 deliberately unwinding its dependence on a single storefront: after its contract with Apple expired, it pulled The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock and the rest of its lineup from iTunes in early December, having already lined up Amazon as an alternative back in September when it said goodbye to Apple. The SanDisk deal, first reported as an exclusive TV downloads service in November, is the second leg of that strategy landing.
The significance for NBCU is distribution leverage: Silicon Alley Insider framed Fanfare as NBC's replacement iTunes store, while NewTeeVee asked in September what all this meant for Hulu, NBC's video-on-demand play still taking shape. Signing with a hardware maker like SanDisk rather than another big retailer suggests NBC wants multiple buyers competing for its catalog, not one gatekeeper.
First-order effects
- Fans of The Office, Heroes and 30 Rock regain a legal purchase option in January through SanDisk's Fanfare service after losing access on iTunes when NBC's contract expired.
- SanDisk gets marquee network content to drive adoption of its web-based download service, positioning Fanfare against both iTunes and Amazon Unbox.
Second-order effects
- Apple faces a fragmented NBC catalog — shows available on rival devices but not iPods — which pressures it to concede on wholesale pricing if other networks follow NBC's lead.
- Amazon and any future retail partners now have precedent for negotiating directly with studios, weakening the per-episode terms Apple set when digital downloads were a two-player market.
Third-order effects
- If studio-direct deals become the norm, TV downloads shift from a single dominant storefront to device-maker and retailer partnerships, with rights holders holding the leverage over platforms.
- NBC's simultaneous experiments — Fanfare, Amazon, VOD, and airing a web series like Quarterlife on broadcast — point to a structure where no single distributor controls a network's digital shelf.
The trend: TV studios are diversifying digital distribution away from Apple's dominant storefront by signing direct deals with retailers and device makers, resetting who sets download pricing.