With 8,000 movies and 50,000 TV episodes, Apple’s iTunes Store now needs to drive sales

Apple’s iTunes Store’s “TV episodes seem to have plateaued at 50,000, while the number of Hollywood movies continues to inch upward and now exceeds 8,000 (2,000 in high-definition),” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune. “But reports on sales come few and far between. Reviewing Apple’s press releases and quarterly earnings calls, we found only three reports of TV show sales: 50 million (Jan. 2007), 200 million (Oct. 2008) and 250 million (March 2009). For Hollywood movie sales, there were even fewer reports: 1.3 million sold (Jan. 2007), 2 million sold (July 2007) and 33 million “purchased and rented” (March 2009). This at a time when song and app sales are are pouring in by the billions.”

“All this helps explain why Apple is pressing so hard to strike new deals with Hollywood,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “The talk in media circles Monday morning centers on a report by Brian Stelter in The New York Times about Hollywood’s resistance to Apple’s latest sales pitch: to lower the price of TV episodes to $0.99 from $1.99 and to sell subscriptions to ‘best of TV’ packages for $30 a month.”

Elmer-DeWitt reports, “Although PBS has started offering selected kids episodes for less than a dollar and CBS has indicated it is willing to consider prices that low for some of its shows, the deals are being characterized as experiments to see if 99 cents is, as Apple claims, the magic price point at which video sales take off.”

Full article here.