US TV network NBC is planning on making more of its shows available for download via iTunes, though tricky copyright issues might delay the roll out of similar schemes elsewhere in the world.
US TV trade mag Broadcasting & Cable quotes NBC boss Jeff Zucker as saying: "We will have many more announcements about many more shows. We see it as a brand-new business, and it will be run like any television network, with new material refreshed and replenished all the time". Zucker notes the growth in the number of TV shows being illegally downloaded at the moment, but chooses to interpret this not as a threat to his TV download plans, but as an indication of the hunger for TV show downloads.
All that said, Broadcasting & Cable says the roll out of TV show downloads may be hampered by copyright issues. Some acting unions in the US are already going back through actor contracts to see if any of their members are due extra royalty payments now that the networks have a new way to sell their programmes. And B&C says copyright issues are even more tricky in other countries - and especially Japan, where actors and actresses are automatically considered to be copyright holders in the shows they appear in.
The broadcasting industry will be hoping such copyright issues can be overcome quickly, to ensure they are able to satisfy that growing demand for TV downloads, because if they don't, the illegal P2P networks will.