Apple retires 99-cent TV show rentals from iTunes

If you're stuck at home for the weekend like many of the people along the East Coast are due to Hurricane Irene, you may have thought to yourself that everything would be fine as long as you had your trusty 99-cent iTunes TV rentals, you may be disappointed to find that Apple has removed that option from iTunes and from the Apple TV.

The 99-cent rental option

Instead of the 99-cent rental option, you now can only purchase the TV show. What once was just in accordance with a dollar will now cost you $2 or $3 a piece. You can as well buy a “Season Pass” for an entire year's worth of shows. According to AllThingsD, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said that iTunes clients have shown that they prefer buying TV shows over renting them. With the recent introduction of Apple's iTunes in the Cloud service, clients can download and watch their past purchases from any of their iOS devices, computer, or Apple TV.

Before Steve Jobs retired from Apple as CEO, he worked long and hard to try to pen deals with the four major studios. He only ended up getting Fox and ABC, and the biggest concern was that the 99-cent option was too inexpensive. But, Jobs and his team encouraged the studios to drop the prices to 99 cents to drive more transactions. Jobs said if the studios priced it aggressively, he could help them sell a lot more.

The rental option

It appears the rental option was more of a trial for studios like Fox and ABC who dropped the prices on some of their rental episodes from $1.99 to 99 cents about a year ago. Fox said in a statement that afterwards considering the results of the trial, it became clear that buying content is a “more attractive long-term value proposition both for iTunes clients and our business.” Fox said it's working with Apple to make content available within its new cloud-based service.

Previously, once you paid for a rental, you had 30 days to watch the show, and 48 hours to finish watching it once you started. Apple's official Apple TV page no longer shows any mention of a 99-cent rental option.