Such as Apple.

In October 2005, Apple and, yes, the very same Disney announced that they'd be . I was traveling in Ireland at the time--and still a few months from my first byline--but I distinctly remember reading about it at an Internet cafe and thinking "this, is a game-changer."

And yet, despite the fact that iTunes went on to offer shows from all the major networks, as well as most of their popular subsidiaries, buying television on iTunes has never really become the same phenomenon that buying music has been. Personally, I've only bought a couple of episodes from the iTunes Store and I'd imagine there are more than a few customers in the same situation. Far more of my friends and relatives buy music from iTunes than TV shows.

I'm pretty convinced that the move to bring television to the iTunes was mainly a gateway towards proving that selling video could work online, in order to lend weight to the eventual introduction of purchasing and renting online. Motion pictures are, in many ways, inherently more suited to the way iTunes does business than television is.

Why? A couple simple reasons. Firstly, buying television shows is expensive. For someone who spends as much time as I do following TV shows--and that, as my friends and colleagues can attest, is a big chunk of time--even buying the shows I watch regularly is a multi-hundred dollar proposition. And the prices are hardly competitive.