CBS to cut some iTunes television show prices to $0.99

John Brownlee ()

CBS to cut some iTunes television show prices to $.jpg

iTunes is a strong service for music and apps, but it’s video offerings are far shakier, especially when it comes to television shows.
The biggest issue is the price: the average show costs $1.99 on iTunes.That seems to be more than most people want to pay for something that can watch for free on television, or wait a few months to buy on DVD for 25-50% less.

Apple’s been hinting they want to drop the average price of television shows on iTunes for awhile now, but it looks like they’ve finally convinced a network to go along with the plan. According to All Things D, CBS is planning on marking down the price of some of its show (but not all) to $0.99.

It’s a smart move, but the wording makes it clear that CBS still intends to charge full price for their more popular shows. With partners like this, Apple’s got a long way to go towards threatening the cable industry.

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About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in iTunes, News |

  • Alfred

    In the UK iTunes store the pricing is also (or perhaps more?) ridiculous.

    Take, for example, a hit sitcom called The IT Crowd made by Channel 4 (which is very funny, BTW, a sort of cross between The Office and Big Bang Theory).

    On iTunes, one 23-minute episode costs £1.89 — that’s nearly $3 USD.

    Yet you can watch every singe episode ever made, in comparable quality, **for free** on Channel 4′s own website — and also on Channel 4′s own official YouTube channel. Oh, and this is in addition to being on demand on the UK’s biggest cable TV network. Oh yeah, and reruns are still being broadcast — even this week, in fact.

    So why would anyone buy it on iTunes for nearly USD$3 per episode?

    You can even even buy all seasons on DVD from Amazon.co.uk for £15 (USD$23). On the other hand, buying all the seasons on iTunes costs £23 (USD$35).

    It’s madness. And I doubt it’s Apple’s fault, it’s probably because (as we say in the UK) the TV execs don’t know their arses from their elbows. :)