TVSquad

The spat between NBC and Apple continues. Yesterday NBC said it would terminate its contract with Apple when it expires in December, to which Apple replied that it would stop selling NBC Universal programming before the start of the fall season.

At issue is Apple's pricing scheme. But while Apple had said that NBC wanted to change the wholesale pricing of TV shows so that individual episodes could cost as much as $4.99, NBC disputes that figure.

Last summer, I told you about a dispute NBC Universal was having with the Writers Guild of America over the webisodes they asked the creators of The Office, Heroes, and Battlestar Galactica to write and produce prior to this season. It seems as if the WGA was a little cheesed off that NBC was asking writers to create these web-only vignettes for no extra compensation, and ordered the writers to stop working on them. NBCU filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the union's order.

Well, the NLRB finally ruled on the matter, and NBCU came out on the losing end. Sort of. The board dismissed the case yesterday, ruling that there was no evidence that the union coerced or pressured the show-runners of those shows to not work on the webisodes. So, while NBCU technically lost, all they wanted from this case was for the WGA to admit that they didn't pressure anyone, which is what they got, according to Broadcasting & Cable. Another dispute between the two parties, about a "side-letter" agreement regarding web content, will be decided by a private arbitrator in late spring.