Amazon-dot-com and the TiVo people have teamed up for a new joint venture. Basically, the way it'll work is that you'll be able to go to Amazon and pick out a movie or a recently-aired TV show, pay a fee and have it delivered via the Internet to your TiVo. This all assumes you own a TiVo (series 2 or 3) and have it hooked up to the Internet, of course. This page over at the TiVo site will tell you more about how it'll work. And this page over on Amazon will show you some offerings you'll be able to download and what they'll cost you.
What do we think of this? We think it's interesting and inevitable. We also think it's going to be the subject of at least one of the nastiest labor negotiations — and probably, strikes — that Hollywood has ever seen. The Writers Guild wants a piece of digital delivery. The Screen Actors Guild wants a piece. And even the Directors Guild — that wouldn't strike if the studios made directors all wear frog costumes and hop around the set — is talking labor stoppage. (If the DGA stays true to history, they won't strike. What they'll do is make some sort of deal which, by its very construction, creates a payment system that works for directors but doesn't work for writers or actors. The studios will agree to it and then try to force it on the other two unions as a precedent.)
On a more trivial level, we're probably bothered more than we should be by them ballyhooing that you can "Download a Joseph Barbera masterpiece." Here's the sales copy that's presently on the page…
Pioneer animator Joseph Barbera of Hanna-Barbera Productions has died at 95, but his Oscar and Emmy-winning toons are immortal. His partner Bill Hanna had a director's eye, but Barbera was the superior artist and gag man. Unbox presents the world download premiere of the Hanna-Barbera classics The Yogi Bear Show, Huckleberry Hound, Jonny Quest, and The Perils of Penelope Pitstop. And making their Unbox debut: The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo.
What's wrong with this? Well, for one thing, there's a certain cash-in-on-the-dead sleaziness, plus the questionable premise that Barbera was a better artist than Hanna. One of the reasons their partnership lasted so long is that they never tolerated that kind of talk. They did sometimes act like the two of them made all those cartoons with minimal assists from others, and you'd think we'd be past that by now. I mean, Joe B. never wrote or drew some of those shows. He was the producer and so, fully his equal, was Hanna. How'd those shows get to be "Joseph Barbera masterpieces?" (I've got ten bucks that says Joe never even saw some episodes of Scooby-Doo or Penelope Pitstop…)
There's also an ad that pops up on the page from time to time that says you can "Download an Iwao Takamoto Masterpiece." Iwao died recently, too.