"Fox: It's prime time for show downloads"

news.com

While Fox TV shows have only been available on limited sites with annoying commercial ads interrupting the feed every six minutes or so, Fox is making deals with a number of companies that will allow people the buy and download episodes and seasons via the Internet. Episodes will cost about $1.99, and whole seasons up to $39.99, all available to any Internet-friendly device.

Overall, I think the expansion of Fox On Demand is a good move. With the current trends in a society completely focused on convenient and efficient technology, making prime-time TV available whenever-time is a strategy a lot of networks are moving towards. The company will profit off of sales per episode and season, as well as the advertising on the site, and customers can now download missed shows onto their computers, phones or iPods for less than two dollars.

My only skepticism of the Fox On Demand project is concerning the on-line distribution of entire seasons. Personally, I don't really see any great benefits for the network over selling them in stores. Because the episodes are only available after they have aired on Fox, someone would have to wait until the entire season ends for it to be available, which I think contradicts the company's intentions with the program in the first place. Even if people are buying previous seasons that they missed out on, it seems illogical to wait for all 13 episodes to download to your computer when you can go to the nearest Target and get the eight disc set for basically the same price. Also, I think this will provide an even easier way for people to copy and distribute the media illegally, something the article did not mention in terms of prevention on Fox's part.