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If Apple cut the price of each TV episode in half -- to 99 cents, from $1.99 -- would sales on iTunes increase enough to offset the price drop?

Experiments are under way to find out, and the head of the nation’s No. 1 television network, CBS, indicated last week that some shows, at least, would be priced under a dollar in the future.

Apple wants to ignite TV show sales, especially as it prepares to introduce the iPad tablet computer next month. But its proposals to lower prices across the board are being met by skepticism from the major networks.

Television production is expensive, and the networks are wary of selling shows for less.

Read more from the New York Times.

CBS will begin selling some television shows for 99 cents per episode through Apple’s iTunes service.

Apple will offer U.S. TV shows for $1 each, according to the Financial Times, starting with the release of the iPad -- expected sometime in April. The move is described by "people familiar with the discussions" as a "test" to see whether cheaper downloads will result in increased sales.

TV episodes are normally $1.99 for standard-definition and $2.99 for high-definition through iTunes. The Financial Times says that "some" television networks acceded to Apple's push for lower-priced episodes, but it's not clear which ones those are, and Apple isn't commenting.

Read more at CNET.

Business just keeps getting better for Apple.

The trendy technology company reported a net profit of nearly $3.4 billion Monday for its fiscal 2010 first quarter, which ended Dec. 26, on revenue of about $11.9 billion.

Both figures were up over the same period a year ago, as was the company’s gross margin, which was 41 percent in the quarter compared to 38 percent for Q1 2009.

Driving these results were sales of Mac desktops and notebooks (up 33 percent year to year), as well as iPhones (up 100 percent to 8.7 million units sold).

In fact, even when Apple loses, it still wins. This was evidenced by its iPod business, which actually dropped 8 percent to 21 million music devices sold in Q1. However, with consumers paying a premium for the newer iPod Touch models, the average price on each transaction increased 9 percent.

Meanwhile, during a conference call with investors, Apple CEO Steve Jobs noted that the company’s iTunes store sold record numbers of film and TV downloads during the quarter. Numbers were not broken out for that category.

“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50 billion-plus company,” Jobs said. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”