Apple taking on Kevin Swint, Wal-Mart Digital Media Head, for International iTunes Movie Rentals

The Wal-Mart/HP Video download service was closed down recently but it doesn't mean it wasn't a significant success - at least in getting studios to sign up. According to Paid Content,

Kevin Swint is Wal-Mart’s point person for digital media, responsible, among other things, for making sure the high-profile, multi-studio download service announced Tuesday will succeed in an increasingly crowded online marketplace. Apple’s iTunes movie department bowed with one studio—Disney—and 75 titles; Wal-Mart launched its beta with 3,000-plus titles from eight major studios, TV shows from Fox, CW, and 11 Fox and Viacom cable networks, and content from Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox Classics. (NBC, CBS and ABC have yet to sign on even though their sibling studios have.) Swint is proudest of the studio buy-in, which makes Wal-Mart the first download service to launch with all major Hollywood studios. But this is just a first step for the retail behemoth. “We’ve been working on this in a pretty intensive way for almost a year now,” says Swint. “I think all the studios understood quickly what we were trying to do.” He’ll judge success across the home video department; a download sale isn’t viewed as cannibalization.

Pehaps the early success of signing on studios is why Apple has opted to pull Swint away from Wal-Mart into a position at Apple/iTunes heading international movies & TV. It probably wasn't a hard sell since Wal-Mart exited the business last month.

Via MacworldUK