What needs to happen with TV shows on the iTMS

I almost gave up complaining as my New Year's resolution, when I realized that I gave up New Year's resolutions as my New Year's resolution back in 2000.

In any case, since you all know I am rather fond of beating dead horses, here's my current gripe: Last night, Arrested Development and Surface were both new episodes. I watched Arrested Development, knowing that I would be able to either grab Surface off of iTunes or via bittorrent later. As I
am up this morning, preparing for work, I check the iTMS and there is no new Surface. Apple and NBC both just missed out on $1.99. I'll grab the show off of bittorrent for free, since it's not ready to go when I need it. I also have no problem doing this because I don't see how temporarily grabbing something off of the Internet (supposedly illegal) differs largely from recording it on my Replay TV the night it was showing and downloading it to my computer and then to my iPod (legal).

Now, whether this is really what I do or not (wink wink), the above paragraph describes the actions of a certain percentage of the market that is escaping the sales of Apple and the TV networks. If Apple and these networks really want to profit and change the face of media, then they need to start releasing the shows simultaneous with the airing of the show. They could even charge $.25 extra as an "early bird" fee, and they'd most likely make a lot more sales and a nice profit, because that's why the iTunes Music Store has been a success: it's more convenient than all the alternatives of questionable legality.

Also, because of this, on the morning commute,
I won't be watching Surface. I'll be watching things like Rocketboom and Channel Frederator. Free media daily and weekly with no odd restrictions. That's what the networks should be worried about more than presenting a nice space between airing the shows and offering them for download. What's that? They'll lose advertising dollars? Well, then, how about you cut out the middle man and rather than distributing the shows for $1.99 through the iTMS offer them for free with advertisements available from your website, pre-formatted for the iPod and the PSP in a nicely scalable MPEG-4 format. Slap it in an RSS feed, call it a podcast, and that way anyone can subscribe to your shows on any computer and you won't keep losing mindshare to new media.