That didn't take long. ABC got the ball rolling by making Lost and Desperate Housewives available on iTMS for $1.99 per episode after broadcast. That breakthrough created such a splash that it was only a matter of time before other content owners clambered aboard. NBC has piled a bunch of current and vintage programming into the syste, including Law & Order (seasons 1 and 16 only, bizarrely), Surface, Dragnet, and more.

It seems like only yesterday when I noted that the TV industry didn't seem to be learning any lessons from the music industry, as to the danger of artificially restricting supply. Oh, it was only yesterday. And here in iTMS we have content from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien ... misleadingly, that content is called "episodes," but is actually short clips from the episodes. And each of those clips is priced at $1.99! (Rant in our Apple blog.) I don't mean to be cruel, but are the blockheads responsible for such decisions developmentally disabled? Can we seek help for them? Is there a person on God's green earth who will pay $1.99 for an undistinguished clip from a nightly show? I strictly forbid any reader of this blog from making such a purchase. And get this: Conan's one-hour 10th Anniversary Special is priced at a rip-roaring, side-splitting, coffee-spitting ten dollars. Poor, poor TV industry, sinking into the quicksand where its piteous bleatings can barely be heard.

But before it goes under, let me get my hands on those Dragnet shows.