The ABC.com episode player has delivered more than a half-billion episodes and a billion ads while ABC and Disney (NYSE: DIS) have sold “tens of millions” of episodes through iTunes, Anne Sweeney, co-chair, Disney Media Networks, and president, Disney-ABC Television Group, said during an Industry Insider session at CES this afternoon.

The numbers came along with an early Valentine to Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) (with iTunes’ Eddy Cue sitting in the audience), as Sweeney talked about the value of a simple user experience after showing screenshots of the way she uses her own iPhone: “We can’t just build it and hope viewers will come. ... One of the reasons so many of us have iPhones and iPods is because Apple gets this fundamental fact. The user interface is intuitive.” The two companies have close ties: Steve Jobs is on the Disney board and Disney was the launch tenant in the iTunes video store. Sweeney referred back to that decision: “We upset a lot of people but it was a new way to give consumers what they wanted.”

Lots more after the jump...

When I went back to check the iTunes video launch date, it was almost a shock to realize we’re more than two years into the portable video download era. Sweeney came at it a little differently: “It’s hard to believe that just three years ago we were still debating the possibility –and wisdom – of putting TV content on other platforms.” What she didn’t mention is that the debate continues in a variety of ways, including the Time Warner Cable-Viacom fee dispute “settled” in the wee hours of the new year without really addressing TWC’s contention that online video devalues the programming delivered via cable.

Sweeney’s simple message—we’ll provide good content, you make it easy to find, watch and navigate—was aimed at CEA members, not financial analysts or the consumer press. Revenue was mentioned in only the vaguest terms: “What we haven’t seen yet is how much content we will consume, and how much revenue we can generate from it.  But all indications are that the more ways consumers have to watch content, the more their appetite for it grows. How fast and how much it grows is up to us.”

—International efforts: Sweeney said they closed more than 50 new media deals abroad last year. One international example is a Disney Channel partnership with Starhub in Singapore—a linear channel, a VOD service and a mobile loop service.

The rest of our coverage is on our CES 2009 channel

• Update: Time Warner Cable, Viacom Resolve Fee Dispute; How Much Does Web Access Matter?
• Viacom And Time Warner Cable Play Chicken; Programmer To Pull Networks Over Fee Dispute
• Disney Call: Iger: ‘A Good Hand In A Tough Game’; Ad Market Weakening
• Apple Says It Sold 5 Billion Songs; Could Movies Become A $100M Business?