CBC TV shows now being sold on iTunes
Canadians can now buy individual television episodes on iTunes, Apple’s digital media store, and three CBC shows are in the mix.
For $1.99 each episode (ouch), you can buy Little Mosque on the Prairie and The Rick Mercer Report, and reality shows No Opportunity Wasted and Dragon’s Den. The store also carries programming from CTV, Comedy Central, and MTV.
Also available will be NHL Games of the Year, including top NHL games in their entirety for the 2007-2008 season, as well as Stanley Cup Classics, a five-game bundle of great Stanley Cup Final games.
Incidentally, even though the shows are being sold on Apple’s store, you don’t need a Mac to watch the programming — a Windows box can play them as well.
Would you buy an episode for $1.99?
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I don’t think $1.99 is too much to pay. If the show is good and advertisement free then I could see myself doing it. But with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation offering free videocasts of their programs (Like The Chaser’s War on Everything) I might be awhile before I take the plunge.
I missed season one of Intelligence, and I’ve heard so many good things about it since that I’d be willing to pay $1.99 an episode for it.
I pay $1.99 for shows all the time here in the states. That is what they cost on iTunes.
if the quality is decent and the delivery is as easy as click-click (since csingle click would be amazon’s patent) then it could be easier than bittorrenting all the eps via mininova.org
I’d gladly pay $1.99 for an episode. It’s especially appealing to those of us who own a television just so it can be hooked up to a DVD player.
I think people are willing to pay for convenience. iTunes makes it easy to get video onto your portable or onto other offline media (which is kind of a bitch with devices that don’t support iTunes, or with some other media management apps). I think there’s a place for pay-to-download video alongside free streamables. Bittorrent or its successor may stick around for wireheads who insist on the free-media-or-death paradigm, but most people will cough up two bucks to save the hassles. Christ, you end up giving panhandlers that much these days without blinking.
With the average season running 13 episodes, $26 is comparable to purchasing an entire season on DVD.
Seconded on the call for Intelligence‘s inclusion on the iTunes.ca roster. Also recommending This is Wonderland if such can be negotiated.
I really enjoy the fact that shows such as Rick Mercer and The Hour are available for free via their own websites. I hope that this isn’t a move to stray away from that. However, if I liked an episode enough, I’d pay $1.99 for it but would rather wait and buy the entire season on a DVD collection.
$1.99 for a “half hour” show? that’s excessive for 22 minutes of content when canadian taxpayers are subsidising cbc content already. as canadians we should have access to any cbc show past or present for a modest infrastructure/media cost — we’ve paid for it already!
what i don’t understand is why i can’t buy dvds of documentaries and series (canadian made) that have aired on cbc in the past? the nature of things, rough cuts, the lens, the passionate eye, etc…? i’m sure the cbc could sell old episodes of fifth estate, disclosure or undercurrents for nostalgia reasons (didn’t the fifth estate do a show on mkultra way back? i know that one would sell).
*sigh* all those programs… aired once or twice, (or 10 times on newsworld
) and then into the vault they go never to be seen again.
cbc, please do what the nfb does… make your stuff available and burn a dvd on when an order is placed. you’d be surprised what people would buy!
For the convince of playing on an iPod, ok they can charge money for it. But only after it is available to be watched on their website or downloaded on a more standard format.
When will CBC come out with a BBC iPlayer type of player, its not just BBC that have them, try the other two big broadcasters in the UK ie. ITV and Channel 4, they got ones just as good, and its still free to watch them on their player and there not publicly funded. CBC get with it, please.
They’re not really free, though, are they? C4 charges for a lot of the content on 4OD, though not their own recently-aired shows. I’d find the DRM a little onerous myself (you can rent shows for 2 days from the first moment you press play, for about the same price as it costs to buy a CBC show on iTunes), that is, I would if there was a Mac version as it’s Windows-only. Don’t know anything about ITV’s offering.
Also, bearing in mind the grief the BBC got from the penguin-humping division over iPlayer, I’m almost glad there isn’t a CBC version yet.