I heard today that CBS has decided that podcasting Penn Jillette’s radio program in its entirety is actually a good move, and they have it up and running now. This is great because I, like probably 95% of the rest of his listener base, have been listening to one of the many bootleg podcast feeds of the program created by dedicated listeners. Now the only thing that changes is the consistency of quality and the lack of effort expendature on the part of Penn’s listeners, and CBS isn’t out any money because of it.
This is a small victory, and hopefully with time the rest of the media outlets will come to the same realization that CBS has: people, if given the chance, would greatly prefer to consume content in a manner that is free from scheduling. That’s why TIVO and the like have been so popular; it frees up the consumer’s valuable time so that they can use it in whatever manner they choose. Instead of being tied to the tv at 10pm on wednesday for Southpark, they can see it at any point after that.
I think many would have been suprised just a year ago at the popularity of television programming on iTunes, but now it is clear to many, many decision makers that on-demand program viewing is the way all content will be delivered in the future. I’ve been downloading a large percentage of my viewed programming off the internet for years now, and am pleased to see it gain some level of legitimacy, but am a bit disheartened by the success of iTunes.
See, the flaw with the iTunes model is the DRM built into the files. People seem more than willing to shell out hard earned money for content they can’t use, and it really saddens me. Too many people just don’t care. “I can play it on my iPod, right? That’s good enough for me.” Unfortunately that line of thinking breaks down when you consider that the iPod might not be the only mp3 player on the market forever. Even now, here in the early days of portable media content, there are rumors of non-Apple audio/video players that one day might surpass the iPod in price and features. But will you be able to play any of the content you’ve shelled out hard earned money on with any of these hypothetical future devices? No, you will not.
The same goes for future software releases—see, at any time Apple can change the licensing on any file you “buy”. You may suddenly no longer be able to burn it to disc, copy it to a new iPod, play it on Windows Longhorn, etc. Will it matter to Apple that you can no longer use the things you’ve purchased in the manner that you were led to believe you’d be able to forever?
Not a bit. This is why I will not purchase anything that has any kind of built-in controls that prevent me from using it in any manner I see fit. The DRM in iTunes is relatively easy to circumvent, allowing you to use the content you’ve purchased in ways that Apple doesn’t allow, but doing so is breaking the law, in effect causing you to steal the content. If I’m going to have to steal content in order to use it, I’m damned well not going to pay for the privellege.
Welcome to the Blogosphere Alistair.
The only problem with on-demand media for me is that I never get around to watching it. Maybe that means it wasn’t worth watching in the first place. I still have a pile of tapes and DVDs I haven’t watched. I just made the problem worse by going a little crazy and buying all the family guy DVDs and the Cosmos boxed set. (See the torrents encouraged me to buy, see!) I can’t wait to see what hoops they will make us jump through to make the content usable on the next generation of blue-laser DVDs. What happened to "the customer is always right"? Or even better the Japanese version: "the customer is god".
Well, I didn’t watch any TV for along time before starting my "on demand" viewing, so that may be part of it. But if you decide on the amount of time you’re going to spend watching tv, and give priority to the on demand stuff, you’ll soon not have the time or patience for the scheduled ‘live’ stuff.
I’ve also stopped listening to ‘live’ audio, listening only to podcast audio, whether it be user created or commercial radio in a new package, like Penn Jillette’s show. You should definitely check his show out if you haven’t yet, I bet you’d really dig it.