Why can’t you rent TV programmes on iTunes?

Published on 17^th April 2009 in Software, tagged Amazon, iTunes, TV.

These days it seems that all I write about is how to improve iTunes. Make no mistake, I think it’s an awesome shop and I’m a good customer for them. I get all my music from iTunes and the amount I spend there seems to be gradually increasing. Yet I think they’re missing one big trick: TV rentals.

iTunes already has a good selection of TV, but only to buy to own.

Let’s take a quick detour; why do a lot of people get their TV from BitTorrent and other file sharing systems instead of watching it on, well, TV?

• It’s free.
• There aren’t any adverts.
• It’s convenient.
• The quality is the same as on TV.
• Shows are available immediately after they’re shown in their country of origin.

Wait a minute though, iTunes already provides something very similar to this. You can buy TV programmes which have no adverts, are convenient to purchase, come in SD (and sometimes HD) and are available as soon as they’re shown on TV. You even get an iPod/iPhone version so that you take shows with you.

However, there are a few key problems with iTunes’ current approach to TV. First of all, you don’t want to own all the TV shows you watch. I love CSI, but I once I’ve seen an episode, it’s appeal is lost because I know what happens. Although I watch a lot of TV, there are few shows that I’d actually be willing to buy to own. There’s also the issue of hard drive space. Sure, memory is getting cheaper by the day, but each season of Lost clocks in at around 20-30GB, which is a lot of data, especially for people with older computers or laptops.

Finally, there’s the issue of price. Most programmes are cheaper than they are on DVD or Blu-ray, but not by much. Lost season 4 is £33.99 on iTunes in 720p and £44.98 on Amazon in 1080p. This sounds reasonable at first, but when you consider that the manufacturing, storage and distribution costs are going to be much lower on iTunes, the price can’t help but come across as inflated.

So what should iTunes do? I would make TV shows available to rent, just like films are, and provide the option to purchase a season pass so that new episodes download automatically. If episodes were 79p to rent in HD and 59p in SD, then the current series of Lost would be £12.64 in HD. Longer running, 24 episode shows like CSI would work out as £18.96 in HD.

At this price, buying shows from iTunes would be cheaper than buying a satellite or cable subscription. Sky costs a minimum of £198 per year for SD or £315 for HD. If I bought all the shows I watch – 24, CSI, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, Lost, Mad Men and Heroes – in HD at my proposed prices, then it would cost £120.08 for a year on iTunes.

This might still seem like a lot of money, but I think that if you give people a reasonable and fairly priced alternative, they’ll come. This is exactly how iTunes has prospered so far, selling billions of songs despite the ease of getting music illegally. Perhaps I’m being naïve about the politics and economics behind the TV industry, but I can’t help but feel that a rental model on iTunes would work.