MSNBC reports that General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) NBC Dateline was able to track 12 of 20 Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPods it left as bait for thieves.

About 110 million iPods have been sold since they were introduced. And people have been murdered for them. And many iPod owners have had them stolen. Moreover, as Dateline discovered, Apple could easily track the thieves and help reunite the owners with their stolen iPods. However, despite an average of five or six calls per customer service rep per day asking for help with stolen iPods, Apple has stayed out of this problem.

Dateline's Chris Hansen created a ruse to find out whether he could track stolen iPods. He left 20 lying around for thieves to steal in cities around the U.S. And when the thieves registered their stolen iPods so they could buy songs from iTunes, Hansen had them send their name, address and other contact information to Apple and Dateline. Hansen then drove to the thieves' houses in an RV to give them a fake prize. At that point he listened to their explanations of how they got their iPods, then showed them the incriminating video of them stealing the iPods.

General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) CFO Keith Sherin defended his company's continued holding of NBC Universal and gave the media conglomerate a surprisingly high valuation of between $40 billion and $45 billion.

GE has been getting plenty of flack about holding on to NBC since it is not #1 or #2 in its market, as previous CEO Jack Welch would have wanted it to be. Sherin pointed out during a lunch meeting with me, my fellow blogger Jon Ogg and a few other writers that NBC is "priceless waterfront property." Sherin argued that Welch had picked up NBC from RCA at a relatively low price -- increasing its value from $3 billion to $10 billion. And in 2004, after forming NBC Universal with Vivendi Universal, the new entity was worth $32 billion. Sherin now estimates that NBC Universal is worth between $40 billion and $45 billion, although I am not sure I understand how he arrived at this figure.