99-Cent TV Shows, Creative Caves, iPod Lawsuits.

No matter how you slice it, there’s Good News and Bad News. The good news? 99-cent TV shows are coming from NBC and CBS. The bad news? They won’t play on your Mac or PC, or iTunes, or iPod.

Oh, another iPod competitor throws up a white flag while iPod owners go to war.

Dylan had it right. The times, they are a changin’. Fast. Just weeks after ABC announced top rated TV shows Lost and Desperate Housewives would be available for $2.99 at the iTunes Music Store, CBS and NBC are ready with 99-cent TV shows.

The problem, of course, is that they won’t play on your Mac or PC. CBS and NBC play to offer 99-cent TV shows through video-on-demand services via cable TV and satellite.

For now, Comcast and DirecTV subscribers will have access to TV shows direct from their TV sets. Initially, CBS plans to offer CSI, NCIS, Survivor, and The Amazing Race on video-on-demand services from Comcast, the largest cable company in the US.

NBC plans to offer six shows, including Law & Order: SVU, The Office, Monk from the USA Network, and Battlestar Galactica from the Sci-Fi Channel. All shows will be shown commercial free.

Comcast will begin offering the video-on-demand TV shows in January. In another bizarre twist, the shows will not be available in markets served by CBS affiliates.

NBC’s shows will air through DirecTV and will be available in November. Many network and TV executives expressed fear about the sales cannabalizing existing viewers and commercial sales.

Duh.

Whose the #1 competitor of the iPod? Yes, there is a competitor. Creative Technology, the makers of the MuVo and Zen MP3 players, is raising a white flag after battling with Apple’s iPod for two years.

Creative continues to bleed money and the stock has fallen over 50-percent this year alone. Now, Creative says they’re changing tactics, won’t compete with the iPod for market share, and plan to become profitable. Again.

It was just a year ago when Creative head Sim Wong Hoo launched a $100-million marketing campaign that he predicted would topple the iPod as the world’s best selling portable music player.

It didn’t happen. Creative’s losing money and will regroup. Again. MuVo and Zen, we hardly knew ye.

Do you have a new iPod nano? Do you know someone who does? Do you plan to buy one this holiday season? Join the crowd.

While you’re at it, join the crowd of class action lawsuiters who are suing Apple Computer.

The latest complaints and suits, filed in both the US and the UK, claim that Apple knew of the iPod nano’s design flaw but chose to ignore such in an accelerated effort to speed the nano’s market launch.

Uh, what design defects, you ask? Well, it seems that some iPod nano users stuck their brand new iPod nano’s into their jeans pockets and purses? You know, those areas with all the keys and pocket change.

What happend? Scratched screen covers and scratched plastic.

Apple has admitted that a very small number of iPod nano screens are defective and have offered to replace each of the screens. Free. However, the smell of lawsuit has the ambulance chasing class action lawyers in a full court press. 

In a press release, attorney Steve Berman says, ““Apple’s iPod Nano has sold in record numbers around the world, just as it did in the US,” said Berman in a press release, “It seems that wherever the Nano is sold, problems with the defective design soon follow.”

Oh, Berman’s law firm? They do work for Microsoft. It’s funny how that works out.

Summary
Bad news: No more TV shows for iTunes Music Store. Good news: Fewer competitors for iPod. Bad news: ambulance chasing lawyers will get rich. We’ll end up paying in higher prices.

Bambi Hambi
It’s important that Apple lock down more video, TV and movies, for iTMS, but I don’t see it happening the way it worked for music. As to lawyers capitalizing with a class action lawsuit at the ‘need’ of stupid iPod users who mix keys, money, and iPods to get a scratched screen; what’s the surprise?

Alexis Kayhill
Lawsuits come and go. So do competitors. Looks to me as if the viewers get screwed again when it comes to making it easy to get TV shows and movies.