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Disney Passes 4 Million iTunes Download Mark

Mar 21, 2006  •  Post A Comment

At his keynote speech Monday at the TelecomNext show in Las Vegas, Disney CEO Bob Iger said Disney content has surpassed 4 million downloads on iTunes since October 2005, when the media company first made television programming available on the new iPods.

That data point is indicative of the biggest change in the TV business, he said. “Technology has transformed authority from the distributor and creator to the consumer. Today’s consumer is more tech-savvy and governs how and when and at what price content is sent to them,” he said. ITunes also introduced the concept of new distribution windows, he said. Disney has been a proponent of re-evaluating distribution windows for content in general.

While content is seemingly the beneficiary of the trend toward multiple and diverse platforms, Mr. Iger thinks the proliferation of platforms will actually separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to programming. “You will see a larger disparity in this new world order between what is good and what is inferior,” he said.

To succeed in this new world order, content providers and distributors must supply easy-to-use interfaces, he added.