According to a report from Variety today, the Jobster and crew aren't stopping at iPhone price cuts. If you believe what the entertainment rag has to say about iTunes, the word on the street is that Apple is hoping to halve the cost of TV shows, dropping the $1.99 price to just $.99. Variety claims three separate sources have indicated that the Cupertino juggernaut has gone as far as telling networks and studios about the price drop, and that the plan was actually the cause of NBC's departure from the music / TV / movie download service. Apparently -- as with the Peacock network -- other providers are balking at the change, particularly when it comes to DVD boxed sets, as $.99 per-episode downloads could impact sales that many studios rely on. The paper goes on to claim that studios are interested in the idea of tiered pricing for older and newer shows (offering something like The Brady Bunch at a lower price than last week's episode of Lost), though Apple is resistant to the concept. Still, the report is largely hearsay at this point, so until we get some more solid facts, we're treating this as educated speculation.

[Thanks, Xavier]

According to a recent article in Variety, Apple is in early talks with Wal-Mart over a way to get iTunes downloads to finally play nice with the commercial giant. Apple wants to team up with Wal-Mart to get access to the retailer's massive title selection, while Wal-Mart is attempting to gain a foothold (or at least a revenue stream) in the downloadable movie sector; at this point, though, it's unclear how these tense negotiations will affect Wal-Mart's plans to roll its own digital video options. The Hollywood publication also reported that 40 percent of studio DVD sales go through Wal-Mart, which means that both movie studios and the gargantuan retailer need to quickly figure out how to adapt to this whole internet thing (we hear it's getting big nowadays).