Do you often bet against Steve Jobs? Fox isn't going anywhere. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp has way too much invested in print newspapers and he sees the iPad as the savior of newspapers. Murdoch's partnership with Apple is a natural.
As for NBC/CBS, their recent negative comments toward Apple's rental pricing structure were done to appease their nervous advertisers. As we know, iTunes TV show rentals exclude advertising/commercials. The networks aren't truly concerned that the 99 cent rental price "devalues content". The networks already do a good enough job of devaluing content by putting out tons of unwatchable programs. They are just scared of losing advertising dollars. However, with advertising revenue at an all-time low, the networks have already been abandoned by their sponsored partners. The networks are actively looking to replace this lost revenue. Itunes rentals gives the networks that second source of income. Overall, this will also be beneficial to the advertisers, who will better be able to negotiate lower advertising contracts with the networks. The networks will take the reduced revenue from advertisers because they'll be making up for it on the other end with the rentals.
The way I see it, Apple holds the cards here. They're the ones that have the army of 150 million iTunes users. All they have to do is show the revenue dollars that ABC & Fox are making from 99 cent rentals, and CBS/NBC won't be able to resist jumping on board. Remember, when iTunes launched, it didn't have the full support of every record label. Some record labels were charging up to $3.99 per song on their websites. The 99 cent per song price was groundbreaking and made the record companies very nervous. Sound familiar?
