So I was watching the clips that Boing Boing has posted from The Daily Show and I was reminded of a recent idea I had for a new television paradigm: A la carte television.
I don’t watch enough TV to justify owning one, let alone paying $40 a month for cable. There just aren’t enough shows that I want to watch on a regular basis. The three things that I do watch, baseball games, Enterprise, and The Daily Show, I can only get by going to sports bars and downloading pirated copies off the Net.
So, here’s what I’d like to see: a way for me to pay some subscription fee so that I could get customized television programs. Not channels, but just programs. I’d gladly pay $10 or $15 a month to be able to download high quality versions of these shows.
I don’t understand why we don’t have this yet. It all makes sense. We have customized ads (Google ads), we have customized recorded television through TiVo, and now we have customized radio through programs like Radio Recorder and podcasting. We’ve got the iTunes Music Store for downloadable music that you pay for — why can’t we have the same thing with television shows?
