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TV Shows On Demand

Ars Technica published an article today discussing the agreement NBC Universal made with DirecTV to sell their television shows for $0.99 to DirecTV customers. The shows are sold without commercials, as they appear in DVD boxed sets.

I am pleased to see the television networks beginning to move down this road, which is one component of what is commonly known as “on demand services”. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Ultimately, the customer is going to win, and what they demand is eventually what they will receive, assuming they’re willing to spend the money when it arrives.

I would further like to see this happen with cable channels, but in a slightly different fashion. Mike and I have had this conversation before, a couple of times I believe. I always contend that it would be a beautiful thing if, instead of buying pre-configured cable packages through your cable company, you could select the cable channels to which you want to subscribe. For instance, if the only reason I am buying cable is to get Comedy Central and ESPN, why can’t I just subscribe to those two channels?

There are plenty of people (me included) who would get cable television if they could just subscribe to a couple of channels, assuming those channels were priced accordingly. Instead of spending $40 per month for all the channels, why couldn’t I spend $5 or $10 for a small handful of channels? The popular cable channels are in some sense subsidizing the poorer performing channels, and I think ultimately this market inefficiency will get corrected.

Regardless, NBC is moving in the right direction, as is ABC with its move to sell episodes of television shows via the iTunes Music Store. Hopefully this trend continues.