News Corp Hugs Apple: 20th Cent. Fox Films To iTunes

Silicon Valley Insider   |  Peter Kafka   |   December 3, 2007 01:55 PM

Read More: 20th Century Fox, Apple, Disney, Fox Movies On iTunes, Itunes, iTunes Movies, Lionsgate, Mgm, News Corp, Paramount, Steve Jobs, Viacom, Breaking Business News
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News Corp.'s (NWS) 20th Century Fox studio is talking with Apple (AAPL) about selling its movies through iTunes, reports Pali Capital's Rich Greenfield (reg. required), who predicts a deal will be done early next year (perhaps in time for Macworld in January?).

So far only Disney has allowed Apple to sell its new movies at the same time its DVDs are released, while MGM, Viacom's Paramount and Lionsgate (LGF) have partial deals. Hollywood has been wary of selling through Apple for several reasons: It's worried about giving Steve Jobs too much control over their product; it's worried about pissing off Wal-Mart and other physical retailers, who don't want to see digital copies sold for less than the discs they sell; and it's been haggling over price.

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- Sundialsvc4 See Profile I'm a Fan of Sundialsvc4 permalink

Studios should be jumping all over themselves to get to electronic distribution of their product just as rapidly as they can. Don't they remember what happened to "Shrek 2?"

The thing that forced the studio to re-state a quarterly profit as a quarterly loss was .. those little plastic discs. Specifically, printing them, putting them in boxes with blankety-blank plastic stickers on the edge, shipping them, warehousing them ... seeing them all get returned by the retailers, and destroying them. What a waste.

What you need is, umm, for example, Apple-TV or its equivalent. Push a button, download your movie. Let's face it, you probably don't watch it more than once (unless it's "Barney" for your three-year-old, but THAT'S another story!). An encrypted file moves across a network, money moves into the studio bank-account, the sale is booked and it's 99.9% pure net-profit. "Sweet! Let's get 'er done!" (ahem, sorry)

    Favorite    Flag as abusive Posted 02:47 PM on 12/03/2007
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