NBC (and others) don't seem to understand modern living. who watches TV anymore? it's either TiVo or Torrents... i downloaded the entire season of Heroes (thinking i should probably check out what all the fuss is about)... but if each episode was $0.99 via iTunes, i probably would have bought the season instead of steal it (although "steal it" is a bit of an overstatement, since NBC aired it for free previously)...
as for owning the season on DVD... sure, that would be nice... if i was like a big fan of the show (which i'm not after watching the season)... DVD seasons are collectors items... and they're also like physical music CDs... NBC needs to look closer at all the music sales iTunes manages...
i'm a modern being... i don't watch TV, i watch the internet.
Yeah, this is the big thing. So far, Apple has been almost always right when it comes to pricing.
We can argue endlessly about what prices various parties want (obviously the music labels and studios and everyone else would love to charge much more for their content), but the thing is, they are competing against freely available downloads of stuff.
I've heard so many people who say that they used to download music from Kazaa, etc. but at 99 cents, it's a good price point for them to download a song and not worry about the hassle of illegal downloading.
Now, obviously TV shows are different than songs (certainly there's a difference between a 42 minute show with video and audio vs. a 3 minute audio file), but the pricing issue is still similar. And there's also the factor that many people think of TV shows as a different commodity, as something they can watch for free on TV (or heck, for free on the sites of the networks now). Of course, you can hear a lot of music on the radio for free too, but whatever.
But anyway, I think it's the same thing with TV shows. At $2 an episode, a lot of people will still just go ahead and pirate it, just like they did with music before. At only 99 cents an episode, I think you'll find a lot more people willing to take the plunge.
So in the end, what is better for the networks? Maybe 10,000 people paying $2 for an episode of a show, or 100,000 people paying $1 an episode?