Dear NBC Executives:

I am writing to give you an example of why your pending divorce from iTunes is a very, very bad idea.

When “Heroes” was first broadcast last Fall, I consistently missed it. It fell on a night of the week when I had other obligations, and I didn’t have a reason to move those obligations for a new show about which I knew little and cared less. So, when the buzz around “Heroes” started, I didn’t have an easy way of catching up on episodes and discovering for myself what a terrific show it is.

Enter iTunes. With an iTunes gift card given to me on my birthday by my wife, I began downloading episodes from the iTunes store, watching them on my computer, and then watching them again with my wife. I became a huge fan of the show, as did my wife. Neither of us would have bothered had it not been for iTunes.

What we would not have done, would have been to use another, more difficult, more time consuming, and more expensive alternative to access the shows. It was the ease, speed, convenience, and particularly the PRICE of the iTunes episodes that made it worthwhile for us to catch up on a show that, now that I have seen the whole first season, I consider to be one of the most innovative and imaginative shows on television. I could say the same for “Battlestar Gallactica,” which I would never have been able to watch at all (lacking SciFi Channel), were it not for iTunes downloads. Through iTunes, I had the chance to watch the free summary episode of the first two seasons, which convinced me to by it on DVD.

If you proceed with your plans to break ties with Apple over the price of iTunes downloads, you will lose me, and other customers like me, who have come to know some of your best shows because of iTunes. I hope that as you consider your course of action, you take this into account.

Sincerely,
Scott Paeth

Here are the cell phone numbers too…

Amy Zelvin 646-678-0575

Joe Libonati 818-399-2092

And most of them have blackberrys. Let’s make sure they have a nice holiday weekend by kindly asking them to keep the shows on iTunes.