In the long list of anti-Semetic statements from Arab theocracies, Iran's president has recently suggested that the state of Israel be moved to Europe. To quote Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
"If European countries claim that they have killed Jews in World War II... why don't they provide the Zionist regime with a piece of Europe. Germany and Austria can provide the... regime with two or three provinces for this regime to establish itself, and the issue will be resolved."
Of course Israelis would likely never leave their homeland, but what if they did? For centuries those in power in Arabia (and elsewhere) have used Jews as a scapegoat to divert the public's attention away from its own problems. The Arabs can argue that Jews are oppressing the Palestinians, Christians can argue that Jews in power at the time were responsible in part for Jesus's execution, and the poor can point to those evil rich Jews.
But what if these folks couldn't scapegoat the Jews? Would Hitler have risen to power had he not been able to scapegoat the Communists and Jews? Would theocracies exist in Arabia if it weren't for Jewish hatred? What would happen to those existing systems setup, in part, on blame of the Jews? Would the populace still back the same anti-Semites if Israel picked up and moved?
As Adam Corrola once said, the Jews should move their state to Baja, Mexico. There's some nice, very affordabe ocean-front property there mired in rural Mexico's economy. Could you image how prosperous that place could become if Israel relocated there? How much safer and cleaner places like Tijuana would become? What a boon for the region? And it would give those who scapegoat the Jews a taste of life without a convenient scapegoat. (Plus, and I'm stealing this from Adam Corrola here, you'd have the greatest discrepency in hats - you'd have the Jews living there with the yarmulkes and the Mexican's with their sombreros.)
A while back Apple started selling two ABC network shows, Lost and Desperate Houswives, from their iTunes Store designed to be watched through the iPod Video (QuickTime video files at 320x200 resolution, or so). Today they announced that they were selling a number of current NBC shows - Law & Order, for example - as well as some classics, such as Knight Rider. And there's rumors that's ABC-owned ESPN might start selling content through the service as well. The price per episode? $1.99
Personally such a price seems far too high to be paying to watch low resolution TV shows that air for free, let alone dropping two bucks to watch David Hasselhoff and KITT. I see only two benefits to being able to download a show through iTunes:
Time shifting is the direction media consumption is heading. Our children will have a hard time believing us that we actually sat around and waited for a TV show to come on. We've already seen it with movies and music, and TV is next. In fact, time shifting is already here with digital video recorders like TiVo, ReplayTV, and the slew of non-branded DVRs being shipped out by cable and satellite companies alike. So time shifting, while a definite benefit of buying TV shows through iTunes, is only a minor one since DVRs provide the same functionality and at a much richer resolution.
The real win here is portability - you can watch that TV show while on the bus, or waiting at the DMV, or while visiting your in-laws. The downside, of course, is that you're staring at a tiny screen, but the trade off is that you've got a TV player that can fit in your pocket.
Regardless, I still can't fathom why a TV show is worth $1.99. To me it seems like the old episodes of Law & Order aren't costing the good guys at NBC anything. All the costs have been paid already to make it and market it. Sure there's cost to sell it through iTunes, but $1.99? I mean, I think they could do this for much less and still make a profit. And it's all “found money” - I mean, five years ago, do you think anyone forecasted that NBC would make any money on old seasons of Law & Order except through syndication? Perhaps their concern is that too low of a price would give the perception of lack of quality, as Joel Spolsky has discussed before, but to me it looks like they might sell more if they lowered the price. (Steve Jobs had announced that over three million videos have been sold through iTunes... I wonder if they cut the price to $0.99 how many would have been sold... more, less? The cost to the content providers doesn't change on how many are sold, it's just 1s and 0s...)
I think $1.99 seems like too high a price because:
- Network TV shows are already free; with DVRs they can be time shifted, too.
- Other internet-accessible, time shifted content is already free (i.e., podcasts)
- The resolution is low, and really only useful if you plan to watch the show on a small device
- The only real advantage in my book, portability, is less than ideal due to the small screen size of an iPod - who wants to watch an hour-long show on that itsy bitsy screen?
(For a great discussion on moving TV content to pay-per-demand, be sure to check out Mark Cuban's blog entry, How Bob Iger Saved Network TV.)