Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iTS, Video
The case of the missing shows in the iTunes Store
If you think that Mac geeks are a a vocal group, you haven't met any SciFi geeks (a group of which I easily fall into). This Friday was the highly anticipated season premiere of Battlestar Galactica's 3rd season. As you know, BSG is available on the iTunes Store, however, 3 days after the premier there is no sign of the 3rd season opener on iTunes.This isn't the first we have heard of major lag time between a show airing on TV and then becoming available on the iTunes Store. Apple, if you want people to buy these shows you really need to post them in a timely fashion (a few hours after the show is on TV would be great, immediately after the airing would be even better though harder to do thanks to time zones).
Anyone else noticing that their favorite shows are taking awhile to become available for download?
Oh, and the BSG episode in question was awesome.
Thanks, Quix.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Patrick McCarron said 11:15AM on 10-09-2006
A coworker of mine noticed this with The Office's new season as well. It wasn't up the next day as it's supposed to be either.
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Quix said 11:09AM on 10-09-2006
"Oh, and the BSG episode in question was awesome."
Thanks for piling on the pain, Scott. :)
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Jonathan said 11:16AM on 10-09-2006
I don't buy a lot of TV shows from itunes, but when I have, its usually been when I am busy and miss the original TV broadcast. Those times, I've noticed the episodes seem to not be available till the next day around 2pm. I would love to be able to buy a show around midnight on the day of broadcast, and watch on the train the next day.
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Gulliver said 11:18AM on 10-09-2006
My damn DVR screwed up and I missed it...I'm dying here. But I'm so glad someone posted on this so I know I'm not alone.
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Yif said 11:18AM on 10-09-2006
I also noticed the lag for The Office - my "season pass" email didn't come until Saturday morning...
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Steven of Corktown said 11:28AM on 10-09-2006
Weeds Season 2 is MIA as well.
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Quix said 11:27AM on 10-09-2006
Hmm, just saw this on Digg, a rumor that NBC will be picking up BSG:
http://www.battlestargalacticasite.com/2006/10/bsg_to_nbc_can_it_survive.php
If true, that might explain the iTunes delay. And if true, nice timing NBC! Way to leave us all hanging!
Personally, I can't wait until the networks are completely irrelevant so we'll no longer be at their mercy. I envision a day when I buy ALL my shows online, with no advertising, no network business nonsense, and no paying the cable company for a bunch of channels I don't want.
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Joshua Ochs said 9:16PM on 10-09-2006
My philosophy is simple - make it available on iTunes when I want it or I get it from P2P and BitTorrent. Music label not on iTunes? I get it from P2P. TV Show not up yet on iTunes? Fire up BitTorrent. I still buy DVD's, but now that movies are on iTunes, I'll start on those as well. I'd prefer to get things from iTunes, but if that's not an option...
Labels - put your stuff online now or we get it through other means.
And yes, the opening episode of BSG was awesome. It was rather bitchy how they wouldn't show a preview for next week, just a "season preview", which thanks to the flashback episodes that are coming, doesn't really tell us squat.
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Jon said 1:37PM on 10-09-2006
But isn't it the responsibility of the studios to upload content?
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Eric said 11:45AM on 10-09-2006
I get Daily Show and Colbert Report Multi-Passes and even when new episodes are airing sometimes one of the shows or both of the shows gets backed up for a few days.
Also, apparently the pilot of Heroes is missing yet episode 2 is online for sale...
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Kyp said 11:57AM on 10-09-2006
This is the only reason I don't have my season passes to the Daily Show/Colbert Report. It would take days to get the latest episode. Plus sometimes it would be 2 or 3 days without an episode and then a dump of 2 or 3. It was very annoying when I relied on them for Train Commute entertainment!
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Frank Patrick said 12:05PM on 10-09-2006
The delay that I'm aggrevated with is the BSG commentary podcast for the season premiere.
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Jeff Barlow said 12:11PM on 10-09-2006
I was looking forward to buying a season pass for BSG so I wouldn't have to be at the mercy of my spotty cable signal and VCR.
It wasn't up on Saturday, so I bittorrented it instead. Your loss, Sci-Fi and Apple.
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Dustin Dauncey said 12:20PM on 10-09-2006
This is what irritates me even more... I don't have TV Shows at all (or movies for that matter)! I am living in the second biggest country in the world (Canada!) and Apple acts as if they don't even know who we are!?!? LOL, I would understand if Apple made an announcement (even on their support page) but their silence is what really bothers me. I have a feeling it has to do with licensing, but you think they would fill us in when you guys have had it for years now and we don't have a single thing... ai ai ai, Apple has a lot to learn still about distribution.
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mark said 12:20PM on 10-09-2006
Heroes- The 2nd episode is on there but the 1st is not- It was there, I missed seeing it and on NBC site they only show the last one so I thought I'd buy it and catch up- No go-
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Tony C said 12:29PM on 10-09-2006
#6 Quix: Not a huge deal really, since NBC/Universal owns SciFi network and NBC already showed the BSG miniseries once upon a time and debated buying into the regular series that followed.But, if they think sci-fi material is once again eligible for prime-time network broadcast, that's no big surprise there either, since they recently picked up the balance of "Heroes" season one. Probably the best thing that will come out of it if they actually pick up BSG, is that it will finally be broadcast in HD.
As for the delays getting programs to iTunes, I'd expect the onus is on the content owners, not Apple itself. Apple likely provided the hardware and software so they could convert the video, but can only request that programming make it to the iTunes Store in a timely manner.
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JR Griff said 12:29PM on 10-09-2006
Let blame rest not on iTunes - with 5 more airings of Occupation/Precipice by early Sat am, Sci-Fi/NBC want to get maximum eyeballs on the adverts laden re-broadcasts - by delaying iTunes release until after the last rebroadcast.
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mike said 1:29PM on 10-09-2006
I was going to buy it too, but it wasn't there. Had to use Bittorent instead.
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Evan said 12:35PM on 10-09-2006
The Daily Show/Colbert Report were slow to update for a week after iTunes 7 came out (almost a week behind), but for the last couple weeks they've been back on track again and the eps are usually available around midnight-3am for download; just a couple hours after airing! I'm now very satisfied with the multipass for these shows.
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martin said 12:39PM on 10-09-2006
I know its not perfectly on topic but iTunes 7 seems to have affected the videos a bit since some of the gorillaz videos disappeared from the UK store.
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