A Stitch in Haste

I'm not a futurist, but I fail to see how this won't become the future of premium television programming:

The British Broadcasting Corp. is planning a new service to let Web users download its television and radio programs up to a week after they have aired.

BBC Director General Mark Thompson ... said he hoped the service could be active by 2006.

Under the outline he presented, Thompson said the player would let Web users download original BBC radio and television programming from its Web site for as long as seven days after it originally aired.
...
Also not disclosed was whether the BBC would charge users a fee for the downloads or how it would protect the digital rights of such programming.

Of course, the British television financial model is much different from the U.S. model -- or is it? In England people pay "TV licenses" to fund the BBC, while in the U.S. we pay "premium rates" for content such as HBO. Why not cut out the middleman (i.e., the cable or satellite company, or Netflix) and sell the content directly over the Internet? Is it such a huge leap from iTunes to "iBBC"?

Anyway, hopefully this will eventually eliminate my Doctor Who access problems.