It’s been a quiet few days in the iTunes Music Store because of the dearth of programming on weekends and especially because of the Super Bowl. However, today MacDailyNews is reporting (via the Hollywood Reporter, paid registration required) that television networks’ relationship with Apple and the iTunes Music Store is paying off for them. The article doesn’t provide much in the way of new news, but there are some choice quotes. Ben Silverman, executive producer of The Office credits iTunes with boosting ratings of the critically-acclaimed show by people looking for new content to put on their video iPods after the Christmas holiday. Albert Cheng, executive vice president of digital media at Disney-ABC Television Group, has seen similar ratings boosts to their programming thanks to iTunes, saying that Lost was doing “extraordinarily well” in iTunes. And despite the fact that there hasn’t been a new episode of Lost since January 25, the series still has five of the top 20 best-selling television episodes in iTunes.
February 6, 2006
February 6, 2006 at 3:21 pm
[...] Sadly, this really shouldn’t be an enormous surprise, but FOX, the network that used to be on the cutting edge on popular programming and now puts its popular programming on the cutting room floor, is not especially interested in putting their programming into iTunes. At least, this is the early word from a forthcoming Newsweek interview with chairman Rupert Murdoch as reported by TV Week. Murdoch says, “How many people really want to get video on a tiny screen when they already have TiVo or a similar service from their cable company or DirecTV? How many will want to pay $1.99 on Monday morning if they missed Desperate Housewives the night before? What’s been announced so far with iPod and Disney and NBC is very small-time at the moment.” Of course, this comes hot on the heels of a diametric article that says that Disney and NBC are apparently pleased as punch with the “small-time” results they’ve achieved so far through iTunes. [...]