The rumor floating around the internet tubes, is that NBC and Apple are working to resolve their differences and bring NBC content back to iTunes. A healthy NBC/Apple relationship benefits both parties, so despite their tiff last year, most anticipated discussions once the air cleared. The most encouraging worlds came from NBC's Zucker last monday, stating: 'We've said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple... ...We're great fans of Steve Jobs.'"

We are curious what is sparking these conversations. Perhaps NBC has realized that launching their own video download service is not as easy as it looks. We assume that NBC did not retain their local customers when switching to Hulu or Amazon, and thus lost money pulling their shows from iTunes.

NBC was one of Apple's first studios to provide downloadable content for $1.99 per episode. Episodes of NBC's The Office, Law and Order, Heros, House, and My Name is Earl, were consistently some of the more popular titles on iTunes at the time. NBC wanted to make more money and suggested raising the price per episode for a test run. Apple stuck with their fixed price point model and rejected the suggestion. Apple and NBC would but heads for the next few months, resulting in NBC not renewing their iTunes contract, and pulling all NBC Studio content from the iTunes Store, where we are today.