A "top executive" at NBC Universal hinted on Wednesday that the company would like to get back on that iTunes saddle, under one condition though: they want antipiracy measures "to help protect his business' revenue," sources inform.

NBC Universal wants its TV shows distributed via Apple's service again. The media and entertainment company's chief digital officer, George Kliavkoff, didn't actually mention "iTunes" when making his antipiracy request, "but it was clear he had the iPod maker in mind when it came to combating people's consumption of pirated content," C|net News notes.

"If you look at studies about MP3 players, especially leading MP3 players and what portion of that content is pirated, and think about how that content gets onto that device, it has to go through a gatekeeping piece of software, which would be a convenient place to put some antipiracy measures," Kliavkoff said in an (onstage) interview at the Ad:Tech conference. "One of the big issues for NBC is piracy. We are financially harmed every day by piracy. It results in us not being able to invest as much money in the next generation of film and TV products."

Relations between the computer manufacturer and NBC Universal are "strained," says the aforementioned source, as 2007 saw NBC Universal pulling its content from iTunes following a disagreement on behalf of the pair when trying to settle on the pricing for the respective TV shows. George Kliavkoff emphasized that he would like NBC content back up on iTunes.

"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," he said, not giving any specifics about his plans or talks with Apple, except that, yes, they talked: "We have film distribution with iTunes so yes, we do talk to Apple," he said.

Price appears to be a bit of an issue still.