(All puns intended.)

Unless as other blogs have suggested, it was a ploy for NBC/Universal to break the contract and attract attention to their new service--that shall remain unnamed here. :-) If Apple had swallowed the deal, then consumers would be screaming "$5 for an episode of Heroes?!? When I can go to (rhymes with boolah).com and get it for free?! Screw Apple!" If Apple says no, NBC/Universal points fingers at them for being poor sports and bullying content providers.

But never, never underestimate the power of Reality Distortion Field!

and DVRs cost ten bucks a month.

Nothing the networks try to do surprises me much...

at all.

NBC will sell shows for 5 bucks. No one will dowload them, and they'll have to lower the price to a level that customers accept. It should take less than a month, six weeks at the most for them to figure it out.

Could be a ploy on the part of NBC Universal, though I rather think they'll fail. The nice thing about the iTunes store is that you don't have to know which shows are produced by what company. Moreover, most of the purchases I've made from the iTunes store were from browsing and not from actually looking for that particular show.

Anyway, there is always the power of communication. You can always let NBC Universal know if you agree or disagree with their position.

NBCUniSupport@nbcuni.com

So now, a 22 episode season would cost 4.99 * 22 = 109.78 ???

When the DVD set will cost $50 at most?

They have gone completely mad.

I suspect, as does much of the world, that Apple's Sept. 5 special event will mean spiffy new iPods, Beatles on iTunes, and God knows what else. The market has driven apple stock up like mad. We'll see.

Five dollars is a remarkable amount of money to charge for a TV show; I can see a matinee movie - in a theater - for about that price, maybe twice that price for a new release movie at regular times. Something's severely messed up, here.

While some people may download shows from a free and illegal source, still others are going to just avoid them all together whether they be online or on TV.

After the music industry went rabid over music sharing, I quit buying CDs for the most part. I don't download music illegally. I just listen to the radio, my old stuff, and do other things with my money. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

These companies complain about online media cutting into their bottom line, but I think a lot of it is the biting their nose off to spite their face with terrible PR. I don't mind paying a reasonable price, but I'm not going to have any part of enabling this level of corporate greed.

Whatever, it's crap! I can't believe anybody is paying anything for it. They should be paying us. I love watching these mastodons of broadcast media trying to find a way out of the tarpit of time.

Can an economists or ad executive answer this for me?

How much does the network typically make from each viewer of a show? That is, take the revenue the network earns from the advertisers for the show divided by the number of viewers of the show. My guess is that this number is much much less than $5 let alone $2.

If it's much less than $2, then why would NBC be demanding these absurd prices?

Personally, I'd like to eliminate advertising completely, and move to a system where we pay for our programs without the influence or time-wasting of advertisers.

It is possible to record on a VCR. Not great quality, but people loved it for years. It's also possible to record it on a DVR. Which doesn't have to be the commercial types; the right computer and video card can do the job. And with a little technical skill you can make your own DVD's. These all have higher visual quality than the teensy, crappy, tiny files available for iPods.

Right now, manipulating digital video at home is difficult but not impossible. From my own horrible learning process I came upon the truth: working with digital video is akin to experimental witchcraft. It can blow up in your face without warning. But eventually, someone will come up with a simple way to record and permanently save video shows - the same way people found easy ways to copy "uncopyable" DVD's that even idiots can use. That will bring an end to this NBC and iPod nonsense.

So now NBC will sell their stuff on the WalMart, Amazon or Zune stores and you can bet it will be in a format that won't play on the iPod.

Way to go NBC! Shut out all those iPod users -- great strategy!

@BJD Cuz

NBC's contract was up in September. The higher pricing was for their new contract.

@tomreedtoon

"someone will come up with a simple way to record and permanently save video shows"

It's already here. I have a DVR and a recordable DVD player. Push a couple of buttons and my shows are saved for all eternity! HAHAHA!!!!

And now they want people to pay $5 for shows they didn't want to see for free in the first place?

Leaving iTunes is a REALLY bad idea. What are these guys thinking?

Actually I should have mentioned that some of the higher end recordable dvd players have tuners so you can just record straight off the air. I'm cheap so i didn't get one of those. LOL.

Well, I guess people pay by sitting through advertising.

Personally, I avoid watching new TV shows. Instead, I read reviews of TV shows after they've been on a while. If they're supposedly really good, I'll add the DVDs to my Netflix queue.

I saw the first season of "How I Met Your Mother" this way. Great show. Even better when watched two episodes at a time.

I also saw "Lost" after hearing recommendations from people. Watched the whole first season in a few days on DVDs from Netflix. Waited a few weeks for the 2nd season to come out, and borrowed somebody else's copy. Watched the third season on a friend's Tivo. Never actually watched it live. Never really "paid" for it (except through a Netflix subscription).

I'll probably rent "Heroes" and "Battlestar Galactica" one of these days. "Arrested Development" too. I can't imagine paying for any of them. Certainly not $2 a show, let alone $5.