Simon Cowell Made Me a Pirate
I’m about 10 minutes from home talking to Erin on the phone. She hangs up on me abruptly saying, “House is back on.” Puzzled, I see that it’s 10:05. When she calls me back 10 minutes later, she reminds me to make sure my DVR caught the entire episode.
“Why did it run late,” I ask.
“Idol bumped it. Simon told the producers he ‘wasn’t done talking’.”
So, of course, my DVR missed the end of the episode. I went online to Fox.com to see if I could watch most of the episode on TV, and just catch the end online. Of course, Fox doesn’t post full episodes of their shows online, only a random 45-second clip from the middle.
Why a major national network like Fox is so far behind the bandwagon is beyond me. CBS, NBC, and even ABC offer their shows online. Sure, you have to pay $2 to watch back episodes of Lost (also stupid) but at least you can do it legally if you want to. Now, my only option is to download House illegally from BitTorrent (the episode was available as of 11pm) or wait until it is re-aired during repeat season this summer. Either way, I’m still going to watch it commercial free, just like everything else.
This isn’t meant as a rant against the TV industry, but rather a question: what are the networks going to do once everyone has a commercial-skipping DVR? What about pay-per-play TV? I’m already paying $50 a month for basic cable (a hundred-plus channels). Why not let me pay $50 a month for the 6 channels I want and give them to me commercial free? Yeah, you’d have to make shows longer (58 minutes instead of 42 or 44) but you’d have happier customers. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t be equivalent economically.
No, my guess is within five years, some over-zealous legislator on Capitol Hill, with a network executive stuffing his back-pocket, will propose some bill outlawing commercial-skipping technology as anti-business. Forget the free market. Why bother when you can grab a choke-hold on your current business model and cajole Washington into doing your dirty work for you. Don’t bother to innovate. That’s way too hard. Some 26-year old in his basement will come up with yet another way to out-sell your product and then you’re screwed, yet again.