ITV Jump Into Bed With iTunes
As the market for downloading content becomes more and more competitive we are seeing a number of battle lines being drawn. Tesco have made their play for the download music market, aiming to take substantial share from leader iTunes, but now iTunes have hit back via a deal with ITV. So what is on offer for the consumer?
ITV have put their toe into the water via a deal which will 260 hours of the archive content made available for download via the iTunes system. The shows in question include Brideshead Revisited, Cold Feet, Captain Scarlet (all available now) with Inspector Morse and The Saint due to come online later this year.
The deal allows users to download either the whole series or individual shows for a cost of just ?1.89 per show. While the move seems to have placed ITV firmly in the iTunes camp, there may be a little more to this than meets the eye!
While we have little news on the venture, ITV, the BBC and Channel 4 are all working together to bring a new on-demand service to the market which will be called Kangaroo. The service is due to be launched later this year and is expected to make over 10,000 hours of content available to customers. The pricing structure and exact details of the service have yet to be fully unveiled but it will eventually become a competitor to the likes of iTunes.
This is perhaps the reason why ITV have only made 260 hours of content available for the iTunes venture (although there are plans to add more in due course). It seems that ITV are very much hedging their bets in case the Kangaroo venture is not as successful as hoped. However, if the three main content providers in the UK are unable to make on-demand TV work, then the sector is dead in the water!
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