Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes, saying that $0.99 TV rentals could "jeopardize" the entire medium, is now the third content giant to give Apple's rental model a big media middle finger. And he's not alone.

Future Apple TV owners, we hope you like Fox and ABC a whole lot, because NBC Universal is only the latest studio to say they're not sharing their toys—$0.99 rentals would "devalue" their content, says NBC Universal's CEO. [CNET via SlashGear]

Comcast and GE are in the "midst of due diligence" for a deal that would give a Comcast 51 percent stake in NBC Universal, and GE 49 percent. It would merge with its own cable networks. The sticking point, for now, is Vivendi's 20 percent stake and its asking price of $6.3 billion. But, since GE and Comcast both "appear…

One of the smaller, but still significant announcements yesterday was that NBC was coming back to iTunes and that they'd be one of the channels offering TV shows in high-def—for $2.99. Buried in that, even, is that they'll sell a bunch of older shows for just 99 cents an ep, and offer discounts to Season Pass buyers.

Yesterday, NBC jumped aboard Starship Zune after its protracted breakup with iTunes. It's clear why—and going with NBC's pricing was only part of it. Saul at the NYTimes says that Microsoft has agreed to develop a copyright filter that would block pirated content from being played on Zunes. Which is exactly what NBC…

NBC Universal Chief Digital Officer George Kliavkoff: "We'd love to be on iTunes. It has a great customer experience. We'd love to figure out a way to distribute our content on iTunes." Obviously NBC did, until they walked out. In order for them to come back, they want more money per show (still) to "reflect the full…

In his CES keynote tonight, Bill Gates (and Bob Costas) announced that NBC would broadcast 3,600 hours of games from the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics via MSN on the nbcolympics.com site. The video will be both live and on demand, with over 30 simultaneous live broadcasts. The cool thing is that finally, people who love …

NBC has become quite the digital distribution whore, like they broke up with their longtime lover and are slutting it up to make them jealous or something. Their latest partner is Netflix.com, where subscribers can watch Heroes eps the day after they air—the release curiously avoids the word "stream"—as well as past eps…