Slashdot Mirror
ABC Affiliates Grapple With TV-Show Downloads
Carl Bialik writes "By making an episode of 'Lost' available for download last week just half a day after it aired, for a $1.99 charge, 'Apple may have helped open a Pandora's box for the media business,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The president of the association representing ABC's affiliate stations sent a letter to the president of ABC, reading in part, 'It is both disappointing and unsettling that ABC would embark on a new -- and competitive -- network program distribution partnership without the fundamental courtesy of consultation' with its affiliates. While the extent of Apple's TV downloads is limited, the Journal parses the potential impact: 'if downloading episodes over the Internet proves popular, analysts believe Apple will get permission to offer shows with better-fidelity pictures. Any success Apple has won't go unnoticed by other online media powerhouses with expanding video initiatives like Yahoo Inc., Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which could all help extend TV downloading to more viewers.'"
offer a service that is a market primed to explode.
You mean, paying for something that I can receive for free with a TV and an antenna?
Give me something I can't already get for free; then you might be offering something worthwhile.
What?
The time has come for broadcast TV to die. It requires too many annoying regulatory boondoggles, and said regulations lead to government censorship of content. Satellite, cable, and the internet are all excellent replacements for broadcast television that free us from much of the mess, and getting rid of local stations means no more whiny local stations in moralist backwaters like Kansas and most of the USA south of the Mason-Dixon Line griping about what their bible-thumping freak viewers don't want to see on television. Get rid of all this broadcast TV nonsense, so we can move on to the next step - elimination the networks themselves, so that all content is simply served up on demand, direct from its creators, without worries over competing timeslots, or network execs killing shows that are only mildly profitable in hopes that a replacement will do better.