But at least it contains every Prince song ever recorded, right? Nope. From what I can tell, the only thing the gadget comes preloaded with is a 15-song, 40-minute concert video.

This wouldn’t even compute in the pre-Lehman era. So what gives?

Unlike other special-edition iPods from U2 and “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, you can’t get this one directly from Apple (AAPL). Instead, you have to buy it bundled alongside a high-end book of Prince photographs produced by Kraken Opus, a British publisher that says its mission is to create the “most epic, stunning, iconic publications ever seen in the world.”

And by Kraken Opus standards, by the way, the Prince book/iPod combo is a steal: The books the company produced for the Arsenal soccer team, for instance, can set you back $6,247–and comes with no gadget of any sort.

I’d love to send you off with a Prince video, but it’s awfully hard to find one on YouTube. His old record label, Warner Music Group (WMG), is feuding with Google (GOOG) and has taken down most of the official clips from the video site. And the artist himself is vigilant about taking down clips he doesn’t approve of. So we’ll have to settle for a few seconds of Stephen Colbert dancing to a golden oldie at the Smithsonian.

This isn’t a total shock. The previous quarter, AOL had only been able to manage two percent advertising growth, and the company had already signaled since then that both its display ad business and its ad network were struggling. But given that these results cover the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, which only included a couple weeks of flat-out economic collapse, there will be worse news in store for the last quarter of the year.

Total revenues at the unit, owned by Time Warner (TWX), dropped 17 percent, to $1 billion. The bulk of that is attributable to its declining (down 26 percent) subscription business, so that number is less relevant–except to whoever may be in the market for one or both parts of the unit, like Yahoo (YHOO). Things would have been even worse, by the way, if AOL’s paid-search business hadn’t ticked up.

Overall results at Time Warner were flat for the year, with revenues of $11.7 billion and earnings of 30 cents per share. CEO Jeff Bewkes also announced that 2008 earnings would be lower than previously forecast due to restructuring charges, but that cash flow would actually be higher than the company had predicted.

Revenues at its to-be-shrunk Time Inc. publishing unit dropped seven percent, pushed down by an eight percent drop in ad revenue. The good news is that online revenues of $13 million, driven primarily by SI.com, People.com and CNNMoney.com, helped cushion some of the blow. The bad news is that those numbers are down from $19 million in the previous quarter.

Other results:

• Cable: Revenues up eight percent; adjusted operating income up nine percent.
• Movies: Revenues nine percent (“The Dark Knight” did great, but not as well as “Harry Potter,” “Rush Hour 3″ and “Hairspray” last year).
• Cable TV networks: Revenues up seven percent. Both subscription fees and ad revenues were up.