May 12, 2008
Bada Bing! Apple to allow variable pricing to seal a deal with HBO?
Posted May. 12, ’08, 1:30 PM PT by David Dahlquist
Category | Apple » News
Steve Jobs is famous for stubbornly sticking to his ideals. Such has been the case with his idea of iTunes pricing flexibility, or lack thereof. Basically, while a lot of studios have wanted the option to charge varying amounts for different shows or movies, Steve has always held the idea that people would not be willing to pay more than $1.99 for an episode of a TV show, and has refused to budge…Until now.
It seems like Apple and Time Warner’s pay channel HBO are ready to hug it out. HBO has managed to “persuade” (to use an ambiguous Sopranos term) Jobs into being a bit more flexible with show pricing. Sources from HBO have told Portfolio that Time Warner is close to announcing a deal to sell popular programs like The Sopranos and Entourage on iTunes with flexible pricing. This will be a first time for Apple, but probably not the last, as they may have opened a Pandora’s box with this deal. Next thing you know, artists will want to charge more for hit songs, and NBC will be running back to Apple shouting “Me too me too!”.
And no, James Gandolfini didn’t have to smack anyone around to get this deal to go through—at least not to our knowledge.
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Is PBS' Nova still $7.00/1-hour episode?
It looks like NOVA is about $5 episode, but in general, the iTunes education videos are a totally different beast from their network offerings.