My 24 debacle

Fox decided to have a 4 hour premier event for their hit show 24. At face value this seemed like a great idea. I must say though that it was terribly excited because I really enjoy 24. But there were a couple of problems. First off, Fox decided to put the premier of 24 up against playoff football, and to start it an hour earlier then usual. Since the show was also being aired on a Sunday (during a holiday weekend) my schedule was different, and I was not home to catch it. No problem, it’s 2007, and if you are enough into a show into a show that you can’t miss an episode, there are a few options open to you. You either watch the episode with commercials on the fox website, or download it from iTunes (usually for around $3.) When I returned from New Hampshire, I had every intention of buying & downloading the first 2 episodes I had missed from iTunes. But leave it to Fox to try and get more money out of it’s viewers. Fox had decided to sell the first 4 episodes on DVD starting the day after the premier event. Because of this the episodes weren’t available anywhere on theInternet (legally anyways.) Sure there were plenty of opportunities to download this episode from other fans who record it and are sharing it online with other fans, but this starts to enter into a bit of an ethical/legal debacle.

I guess my big issue is that Fox’s greed to make a few more dollars by selling a DVD of the first 4 episodes forces a fan who wanted to catch the 2nd night’s 2 episodes, to either download the episodes illegally, or to read an online synopsis of the content they missed. Since the whole concept of 24 is time, you CAN’T miss an hour, and this was a major oversight. I guess it’s not such a big deal, because it will all probably become available on iTunes in a few days, but I definitely feel like I was/am being taken for a ride on this one.