Wednesday, May 09, 2007, 10:00 am

Disney sells 23.7M TV shows, 2M movies via iTunes

By AppleInsider Staff

Walt Disney, which on Tuesday said second quarter profits rose 27 percent, also offered analysts and members of the media an update on its iTunes sales totals during a conference call.

For the quarter ended March 31, the entertainment conglomerate earned $931 million, or 44 cents a share, up from the $733 million, or 37 cents a share, a year earlier.

During a conference call, chief executive Robert Iger refused to break out a measure of the company's digital revenue, garnered from its Web sites and sales of movies from Apple's iTunes.

Iger, however, did offer an update on the number of digital media titles Disney sold through the iTunes store. Thus far, he said, iTunes and Disney have combined to sell around 23.7 million TV episodes and 2 million movies.

Iger added that Disney viewers have also watched nearly 92 million ad-supported TV episodes via the ABC.com Web site and 91 million shows on the Disney Channel Web site.

One of the last times Disney provided an update on iTunes movie sales was on Nov. 9, when it announced sales of approximately 500,000 films through the Apple download service -- a sales rate of approximately 62,500 movies each week, or just shy of 9,000 per day.

The latest totals indicate that the rate at which Disney is selling movies through iTunes has not changed. The additional 1.5 million downloads over the intervening 6 months continues to break down to 250,000 movie downloads per month, or 62,500 movies each week (just shy of 9,000 per day).