Ask and Receive: Fox to Sell Shows Early

Well, at least two shows anyway, and ones I’ve never watched…but since it was only a few days ago I wished a network would start selling shows before being aired, I’ve got to be excited right?

On one hand, I am because it should mean the other networks will play copycat and throw a few more shows in the “view early” mix. On the other hand, I would hope to buy shows at least a week in advance, not the two days Fox is offering for “The Shield” and “Rescue Me”. The $2.99 per episode doesn’t bother me much — though less wouldn’t be bad — because there is a handful of shows I’d be a sucker and shell out for, like “Lost” and “My Name Is Earl”. Of course if I can’t keep those episodes as long as I want after buying them, forget it.

Fox also plans to sell episodes of “24” and “Prison Break” for 99cents for up to a week after airing which makes absolutely no sense to me. If you have the DirecTV DVR needed to purchase these shows, why wouldn’t you just tape them yourself? Plus, only offering them for a week afterwards indicates to me that Fox doesn’t quite understand this new market yet.

Overall this is a mixed bag, while Fox is showing some guts offering shows early, they need to clean up a few rough edges before anybody is going to be really excited about this.