Recent comments made by Apple CEO Steve Jobs and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker suggest that the two companies may be ready to resume negotiations in regards to the sale of the studio’s television shows on the iTunes Store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” Zucker said in a recent interview.
“We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.” In a separate interview, Jobs said, “We’ll put it back together on the TV thing. Everybody lost (when Zucker pulled his content off iTunes).
But NBC is a great company, and Apple is a great company.” “Fortunately,” Jobs half-joked, “there was a writers’ strike, so it didn’t matter as much as it might have.” In August, NBC announced it would not renew its contract to sell its television shows on the iTunes Store, and eventually pulled its lineup from the Store in December; however, NBC Universal has been announced as a partner on Apple’s new iTunes Movie Rentals service, further suggesting that the stalemate between the two companies may soon be at an end.