Apple has finally managed to negotiate the rights to sell some television series to Canadians via iTunes Store. The only problem is that there are more episodes in one season of some of these shows than there are actual shows up for sale to Canadians today. The CBC, CTV, Comedy Central, and NHL are the only networks offering shows for download. By my count, there is a grand total of 12 shows available to Canadians. In fact, you can probably see all of them in this screenshot of the shows in Coverflow view. Now that is an anemic selection.
In the run up to this launch, much of the press cracked jokes about Canadians only being able to buy content like the Beachcombers. Well, the situation is worse. You cannot even buy the Beachcombers. As of now, Comedy Central offers the only shows that I am remotely interested in viewing. And, I can already view those show free from comedycentral.com. Lackluster is too positive a word to describe this shopping experience.
The whole point of the iTunes Store is that it is supposed to be easier and quicker for people like me to buy an episode of a TV show for $1.99 than it is to download that same episode off a BitTorrent tracker like the Pirate Bay. This is why iTunes Store is so successful in the realm of music. It is faster for me to download a song off the iTunes Store than it is to hunt it down on the Internet. Moreover, I have actually discovered new bands I would not have heard of otherwise by shopping at the iTunes Store.
Apple and its content providers better have an aggressive post-launch rollout strategy for more TV shows and past seasons of currently offered shows. Otherwise, this endeavour will be met with nothing but potential customers with money-in-hand disappointed that there is nothing for them to buy, and it will fail.
But maybe that is what some parties in the industry want after seeing Apple become so successful in music by doing something they would not dare contemplate: giving customers what they actually want. Here is to hoping that there are more TV shows on sale in the coming months. I desperately want to get rid of my Rogers cable subscription and I see the iTunes Store as its replacement.