I was pleased to find out that Apple is now offering episodes of The Daily Show for download in in the iTunes store. I’m as big a fan of Jon Stewart as you can be living in a country with no Daily Show. The first time I saw him was in the (reportedly entirely ad libbed) exchange he has with Will Ferrell in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (the news interview scene). The last time I saw him was in the few clips of him hosting the Oscars that were left in RTÉ’s abridged (read "shitty") coverage of that event. Essentially I’ve seen enough of this guy to know that I’m missing out on something great, so I welcomed the news that I would finally be able to see The Daily Show, even if it was going to cost $2 an episode.
Apparently Apple (or the TV company selling it to them) is less keen on me seeing it. It’s only available in the US iTunes store, and my Irish account doesn’t work there. Boo. Let me get this straight: I live in a country where American political satire will never have enough mass appeal to get onto TV. I’m willing to pay real money, right now, to the producers of that content to let me download and watch it, using an infrastructure that is already in place. And they won’t let me.
These are the same people who complain that distribution of their content on file-sharing networks is damaging their businesses. They have no-one to blame but themselves.