Among the goals Jeff Zucker, president and CEO of NBC Universal, (NYSE: GE) outlined for the company during the lunch session at the UBS Global Media & Communications Conference: replacing the $15 million associated with sales of downloads of the company’s prime-time lineup on Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes. Still, he indicated that digital is viewed as a more experimental, uncertain entity within the company and so, in terms of his list of priorities, it ranks last. Looking ahead to next year, Zucker’s plans, in order, include greater focus on cable - which he repeatedly noted accounts for 50 percent of NBCU’s profits - and a turnaround at NBC Entertainment, not for bottom line reasons, but because of perception. Lastly, he expects to continue NBCU’s international expansion and “make some more moves on the digital side.” Also, he said he’s pleased with the usage online video site Hulu, the JV with News Corp., (NYSE: NWS) has received and that he expects it to exit the current private beta stage sometime shortly after the new year. Some more on Zucker’s plans: More after the jump.

—The economics of digital: Discussing the financial transition from traditional media to new media, Zucker said he wants to make sure “we’re not replacing dollars with pennies.” Given the uncertain value of content in the digital world, Zucker said that unidentified rivals have been “chasing press releases,” and experimenting with different ways of putting their content out there. “But nobody has figured out the bottom line of the digital economic model.” Over time this will change. We want to make content available wherever consumers want it.

-- Apple’s inflexible pricing: Zucker said that the decision to let its TV programming download deal with Apple expire wasn’t difficult. “We had 40 percent of the market share on the video side of iTunes, we were most popular.” Somewhat dismissively, Zucker noted the Apple deal was worth $15 million in profit to NBCU last year. “Still, that’s nothing to sneeze at that, every dollar matters. But it wasn’t the game changer for us that it was for Apple. We would like to be part of it. But nowhere [else] does the reseller set the wholesale price. We wanted price flexibility and greater protection against piracy. Over time, we hope to work all that out. In terms of replacing that, we have our content elsewhere with Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and NBC Direct. They don’t have the scale that Apple has, but people are using it. We haven’t replaced the $15 million, though, but we will and we hope to do it with Apple included at some point.” (NBCU’s entertainment programming is now off iTunes; NBC News video and audio podcasts are still available.)

-- On the writers’ strike: Despite emphasizing his natural optimism, Zucker didn’t sound very optimistic about a resolution of the writers’ strike. Noting that this is the 29th day of the walkout, he said he hopes that in light of the latest proposal for the writers last week, some of the “give and take” that should have started months ago will suddenly emerge. Nevertheless, Zucker expressed a degree of frustration with the writers’ perspective that there is a pie of digital dollars available to negotiate over. “How can they have a sense of where we are, given the economics of digital these days? I’m an optimistic person and I have to remain so. But I just don’t know what will happen.” In terms of any impact, Zucker’s stated optimism clearly showed, telling attendees the company’s film unit’s slate is full through 2009, and cable has a fairly healthy stock of content saved up. Only late night is particularly suffering at the moment, as most primetime shows are in the can and will last through March. Overall, then, Zucker claimed the impact is negligible: ”NBC primetime is 10 percent of the company’s bottom line. I don’t want to diminish it, but having diversified the company in the last five years has been an important thing.” (Ed. note: Notice how minimizing digital revenues has become all the rage lately?)

-- The value of Hulu:Reiterating the importance of regarding digital as an experiment, Zucker cautions that, given the economic models available, “you don’t have to be the first one” to try something new just because it’s online “We’re in the beta test with Hulu and we have 60,000 users, seven major advertisers. The online press wanted to kill it, but it’s doing well. Advertisers tell us they want a safe environment. That’s what this is about. They don’t want a cat on a skateboard, but they do want The Simpson’s or a film they like. Over time we will add to it, especially because viewers and advertisers want ease of use. After the first of the year, though no date set, we’ll look to go live with it.”

-- The value of cable: As evidenced by NBCU’s recent $875 million acquisition of Oxygen, Zucker is putting more resources in support of its cable properties, such as CNBC and MSNBC, though he did not mention the recent challenge from News Corp.’s Fox Business Network.  “We do see cable as a very important part of our future. USA is dominant. Sci Fi is seventh highly rated, and has captured an identifiable niche, which is most important in cable. On the news side, CNBC and MSNBC had spectacular years. I think people would be surprised by the margins. We’re higher than 40 percent and we’re going to do more to maintain that number and reach higher.”

-- No one is tech proof: Technology is a great thing for us, at the same time, made it easier to steal from us. I don’t think anybody is insulated in this day in age. A bill introduced in the house this week will protect IP. The French have been aggressive on this.