SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Apple Inc. has scooped up Time Warner Inc.'s HBO to
feed television shows to its online iTunes store, reeling in one of the last
holdouts among major channels and agreeing to a rare pricing concession to land
hit shows like "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City" and "The Wire."
The Cupertino, California-based company said HBO programming began appearing
on iTunes Tuesday and the shows cost either $1.99 or $2.99 per episode, making
HBO the only channel allowed to charge above the standard $1.99 for their
episodes on iTunes.
Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, said the higher prices for some
of HBO's shows -- in particular "Deadwood," "Rome" and "The Sopranos" -- are
still cheaper than buying the DVD sets of the full seasons of those shows, which
translates into prices two or three times higher per episode.
"I don't think it's a shift in strategy -- I view this as an extension of
the strategy we've had," Cue said in an interview.
HBO is also trying out a service of its own that allows cable customers with
HBO subscriptions and high-speed Internet connections to download shows and
movies and play them on personal computers, but it's not widely available.
Apple splits the revenues from iTunes sales with content providers, with
most of the money going back to the movie studios, television channels and
record labels whose work is sold through the Web site.
That's made iTunes a favorite of independent musicians and other artists
whose works wouldn't be distributed as broadly without the service, but has
rankled some big-media companies because of Apple's tight control over the
pricing.
In a high-profile rejection of Apple's pricing tactics, NBC Universal
stopped offering TV shows on iTunes last fall after a spat over its inability to
set different prices for certain shows. NBC then defected over to Microsoft
Corp.'s camp, offering its TV shows on Microsoft's rival service, Zune
Marketplace, where the network was given more flexibility over pricing.
Cue said NBC is the only major channel currently not offering its shows
through iTunes. The store currently carries 800 different shows and has sold
more than 150 million episodes.
The iTunes store isn't a big cash cow for Apple, making up less than 10
percent of Apple's $24 billion in sales last year, but is a big driver of iPod
and Macintosh computer sales.
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
|