Pope Benedict: Stealing Songs?
That Explains It: Radio Stations Took Payola To Play Jessica Simpson

iTunes To Begin Selling Monthly TV Show Subscriptions

Culture

from the this-is-getting-expensive dept

Wed, Mar 8th 2006 12:38pm — Carlo Longino
iTunes will begin selling monthly subscriptions to The Daily Show from Comedy Central, for $10 for 16 episodes. The price seems high, but raises some interesting points. If people are willing to shell out that much for a single show from a single network, will they be willing to pay the presumably high prices of a la carte cable? It's hard to condemn the move too much, since these companies, like everybody else, are still feeling their way through this space, but it seems like Comedy Central in particular could come up with a more compelling offering that offers better value, for instance getting people to pay for their Comedy Central TV subscription, and offering them free downloads, or even just offering free downloads of all their shows, supported by advertising.
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  • identicon
    dani, 8 Mar 2006 @ 12:50pm

    Makes sense to me

    I can see the business side on this.

    CC makes a set amount depending on how many people subscribe to their channel through their local provider. They've teamed up with all the cable companies.

    Now they have the oppurtunity to move into the mobile/portable realm, which should mean more income for any business.

    If all channels started offering their shows for free download, why would I pay my cable bill?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    George, 8 Mar 2006 @ 1:12pm

    First Mover Advantage

    Regardless of where the industry will go with paid video content, the first mover will likely have more success at a higher price than followers. Personally, I think $10 is too much, I should be able to download the program for free directly from my TV subscription via my DVR box.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    LOCOBOX, 8 Mar 2006 @ 1:25pm

    Love the idea

    Man, I don't have Cable TV or satellite at my house so I miss all the good stuff like my favorites the Daily show, Conan,and 24. If I could pay $10-20 for the whole season of 24, or 10 for 15 episodes of the daily show I'd be a happy man.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Dan Mayer, 8 Mar 2006 @ 2:18pm

      Re: Love the idea

      yeah i would pay $10 for a full season but but 16 episodes is $10 for a quarter of the year essentially... so that means $40 for a years worth. Without the cost of shipping, production, giving money to the retailers, and a lower quality product I expect some of the savings to be passed to me.

      If a DVD costs $15 i want a digital download of equal quality that i can burn to my own DVD for $12, they are just trying to get an increased profit while offering you less value.

      I dont really buy music on Itunes because DRM and that i cant put it on different players.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Mark Nielsen, 8 Mar 2006 @ 2:20pm

    Pay Per Show instead of per channel?

    If TiVo (or Akimbo more likely) could allow me to pay for certain shows instead of channels (at a reasonable price) I think I would take a serious look at getting rid of cable/sat depending on cost savings. Of course, that's been my debate on the la cart channels as well. If it saves me $5 for much less services it's not worth it, saves me 50% of bill it is.

    But will I do this through iTunes? NO. I'd rather buy a SlingBox and a compatable smartphone.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    imfbsbn, 8 Mar 2006 @ 2:36pm

    a la carte cable

    I pay $49.99 for 84 channels or say 60c/channel. I watch maybe 10 channels (abc/cbs/nbc/fox/cnn/usa/wb/fnc/tnt/tbs.) If I had to pay 4 times what I currently pay/channel or $2.40/channel for a la carte service I would cut my cable bill in half. Save $300/yr? Hell yes you can take CSPAN and QVC and ... ... ya you know.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    DittoBox, 8 Mar 2006 @ 2:39pm

    I'd pay

    I'd pay ~40-50 USD a month to be able to download and watch sub-HD (720p) non DRM'd and non commercial versions of whatever shows I wanted.

    Lost, House, NCIS, Top Gear (it's BBC so it won't happen I know) and maybe fraiser reruns.

    If I could for a set monthly fee, a la carte my TV shows (maybe download other shows, without cost), when they're released I could download and watch the whole thing, without commercials and DRM I'd be a happy man.

    I could ditch the Sat dish and the Tivo and just use a MythTV to watch my programs. Best of all, I think if they made it distributed they could even reduce their bandwidth costs...though I'm sure the telcos would jump on board and start whining about Apple not paying up...but that's another can of worms.

    That to me, is where things need to go.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    tyler, 8 Mar 2006 @ 4:32pm

    Daily Show and Colbert Report Already on!

    I'm not sure if anyone else has noticed yet, but the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are now on iTunes. You can buy a "Multi-Pass" good for 16 shows at 9.99. It automatically downloads when their available just like a podcast.

    Pretty close to what this release is talking about.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Peter Rambo, 10 Mar 2006 @ 12:36am

    other shows

    I don't care about the Daily Show or anything else that Comedy Central has running in their prime time spots.

    What I care about is the stuff the stopped showing years ago that is far better than Mind of Mencia and the Blue Collar Comedy stuff. God, Craig Kilborn's fashion obsessed daily show was more culturally relevent than Mind of Mencia.

    I'd easily pay 10$ a month or more to have access to their backlog of Uprights Citizen's Brigade, Dr. Katz, Kids in the Hall, Strangers with Candy, Politically Incorrect (pre ABC era), Exit 57 (colbert and amy sederis's sketch comedy series) and old Daily Shows from 2 or more years ago (what I wouldn't give to see Michael J. Fox's guest spot on one of John's first few shows... when he had been on more shows than John....).

    Hell, I'd pay a la carte for all of those, and probably for some of the old shows I never got a chance to see.

    Cable's ability to make money from the internet doesn't have a damn thing to do with offering current shows online, it has to do with offering old shows that they don't even air rerun's of anymore.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    BALLA, 19 Dec 2006 @ 7:15am

    yeah boi

    yeah dawg itunes is the shizzle for reeezay dawg thats all i got to say hey hey hey yall dont want to play i b on that kryptonite nd i be bangin all yall wifes

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Dr Dre, 22 Dec 2006 @ 6:45am

    those rymes is tight

    yo wut ur name i want to get a record deal w ur shit all up on it

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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