So Apple unveiled the fifth generation ipod, and it supports video playback. They also signed a deal with ABC (Disney, Touchstone, whatever) and are selling their TV shows on itunes.
For those who don’t know you can now buy Lost, Desperate Housewives or Nightstalker just hours after they air for $1.99. Good value, no? But it was just on TV for free, I hear you cry.
So I put it to you, bearing in mind that with the advent of bittorrent, DVD boxsets, Digital Terrestrial and Sky +/Tivo becoming the norm all over the developed world and the current model of ad-supported TV fast becoming obsolete as a means of making money from a program, how much are you willing to pay to see/own your favourite TV show, minus adverts and bugs (onscreen graphics)?
as long as bittorrent is around, I won’t pay itunes a penny for TV. and after bittorrent? I won’t pay that much, and I certainly won’t be paying it to apple!
I dont mind the onscreen icons and whatever that appear on Torrent copies..
If i used my i pod more (and had a newer ipod), i probably would pay the $1.99 per episode. Its not much at all really. But as i dont, id much rather download the torrent, then when the whole series comes out on DVD il buy that.
But i think $1.99 is reasonable. Then again, i can get them for free, online! But like i said, if i used my ipod more, and had a new ipod, then i would probably buy them.
I am willing to pay for the latest shows from America, A few dollars/euro per episode. I would pay because the shows do not air here yet and I love to see them asap and without commercials.
But I would only do it if the risk of downloading becomes to high, or if DL’ing would be no longer possible.
Its all a money making rip off.. am i that sad that i will pay to watch deperate housewives on a a tiny screen – NO. This is for serious geeks and tv freeks only. Someone said earlier that they would pay to watch a tv show that was not over here yet. That novelty would soon wear off and personally I would rather wait til it was on air. Music on a ipod is one thing TV is totally another… They wont be getting a penny out of me! Peace
Some mixed views here, let me play devils advocate for a minute!
To the people getting the shows for free on bittorrent, how do you feel about taking something that you don’t own the copyright to?
Is it as bad as using Limewire to take music? Or much easier because most TV is free to air?
and to the last guy, take 24 on Sky one. last year the average viewing figures were 600,000, down 500,000 from a year earlier.
People downloading the show in the UK were up to 200,000 by the end of the series.
Now they could all have been geeks, but if you lose half your audience for your flagship drama to downloaders, what are sky to do?
and the same goes for any new channel in any country trying to build a schedule around an international hit.. you just can’t convince advertisers to invest in dwindling audiences, so the money will have to be recouped somewhere… If not in a pay-per-view way, maybe in a £200 TV licence? Or a reality show £1 a minute phone-in?
Wooo, look at that paragraph, you can tell I work in TV! Basically I’m saying that although tV seems free, it is paid for by huge amounts of advertising. If people stop watching the ads (which through various means is happening more and more) then production companies won’t have a pot to piss in, quite literally, and we’ll be watching “Celebrity Poonani” shows forever!
Technology and society continually change and advertisers and TV makers need to reflect and direct these changes, I don’t have an issue with $1.99 per episode for Lost, but network deals make more sense to me. Buy into the network and get unlimited access to all TV shows for a set fee.
=^.^=
so kind of like a subscription? Sounds good in theory, but what if you ended up paying £130 a year and you only watched one or two programs on that channel (or network)? Or worse still, this network kept adding new channels to give you more “choice” (by choice they mean crap) and eventually the price was over £600 a year, in the process turning you into a goggle-eyed wreck?
Paying per program wouldn’t sound so crazy then would it?
I would not continue to pay for a subscription that I did not feel was value for money. I do believe everyone enjoys a quality all inclusive deal.
=^.^=
I find myself DL’ing and not watching the shows here (the Netherlands) because i do not like the commercials, I prefer to DL them and watch them at my leisure, commercial free.
I do watch ‘Waking the dead’ (BBC) because it airs at a convenient time (22:00) and it is a quality program and commercial free (which does make you run to the toilet during the show because there are no commercials
).
Once you are used to DL’ing, well you DL more. See more shows that are new and you like, it is a circle.
If there would be a channel like HBO here I would be happy to pay for it, record the shows I like and watch them when I have the time.
But that is still a few years away in the Netherlands
I’m not sure that Apple has thought this through. I say this for the simple fact that in most places all around the world television programmes are generally free. Unless you subscribe to a satellite or cable service and even then your paying mainly for the maintenance of the network rather than the cost of programming. Ruvjet possibly makes the point more succinctly but, tv is paid for by advertising: so in essence Apple/itunes is charging you $1.99 to have the advertising removed. But will that revolutionise television – simple mathematics suggests otherwise. If, as is rumoured an episode of a blockbuster show like for example CSI costs $1M per episode or $24M a season how many $1.99 downloads will it take to pay for an episode (say, 500,000) now what impact does that have on the viewing figures itself? or perhaps more importantly how many downloaders would it take before the actual ad spots in between were reduced in value so drastically to not only put the show at risk but also the network the broadcasts it? (I can be sure that Apple aren’t giving them a slice of the action). In fact this type of transaction that cuts out the middleman (i.e. the network that broadcasts the show) puts the networks at risk. In this post I’m merely stating those consequence that Ruvjet has avoided in his post. Obviously the networks aren’t going to sit still, so I foresee more multiple start times of shows for those without tivo/sky+ but with digital tv. Perhaps even simultaneous broadcast online (I mean if you have enough bandwidth to download from itunes how do you fancy streaming it as and when online) Also, anyone who has vodafone live will have seen the TV packages they have lined up to be beamed to you OTA. My general view is that Apple got goaded into this without thinking it through – they did an excellent job in getting some content – but generally how does a ipod video move me much further on from my sharp 902 or PSP. Okay so I get legally download from online. But personally I see an almighty battle on the horizon on bittorrent and tv (as opposed to movies) simply because of the betamax decision in the supreme court and more importantly people have been tape recording/tivo-ing/sky+-ing for a long time. Hence the reason why no-one has really gone after the TV downloaders. I suppose no broadcaster wants to be responsible for a free-for-all if they lose in court. Anyway, thats my 2p for now…
I agree with the anonymous reply