Fox Leads Apple into Film Rentals

By Andrew Wallenstein

The oldest rumor in history may finally be true: Financial Times reports that Apple's iTunes is getting into the movie rental business with first partner 20th Century Fox. Wall Street Journal and other blogs have followed, which likely means this time the news is the real deal.

So many more questions need to be answered, and likely won't until Macworld goes down: What's the price point? How long does the rental period last? Is there a subscription model? Will Fox be the first of more such deals?

Nevertheless, iTunes' foray into rentals is significant if for no other reason than this may signal a newfound flexibility in stone-hearted Steve Jobs' attitude toward the studios, which frustrated NBC Universal enough to pull out. What a way to start the new year.

Horn tootin' time: I pretty much saw Apple relenting, albeit to NBC Uni, not Fox, in THR's predictions for 2008.

Steve's .02: The other compelling point of interest here is News Corp's strategy, which seems to be to spread their video bets across multiple platforms -- MySpace, Hulu (with NBC), and Apple's iTunes. Though some may see the move with iTunes as undermining the Hulu effort, I would suggest that News Corp will receive a good deal of experience with iTunes rentals that it can apply to its other ventures. What's more, I'm not convinced that exclusively selling your videos via one provider is the way forward.

One other thing: Anybody notice how the WSJ -- owned by News Corp -- didn't break the story? But, once it followed the story, it cited a source familiar with the matter (not the Financial Times), suggesting an editor at the WSJ or someone at News Corp was none too happy with being scooped, and called upstairs to get confirmation. That's the biggest indicator of this anonymously-sourced news' veracity.