The interesting thing to me about this is that the media companies seem happier to take a flat fee than per-viewing fees for episodes, which seems counter to th

The interesting thing to me about this is that the media companies seem happier to take a flat fee than per-viewing fees for episodes, which seems counter to the general strategy of making people pay every time they watch something. I can think of for this are: 1. Their models show that they get more money from the flat fees via Netflix than from per-rental fees. 2. They prefer the steadier payments that flat-fee library access provides to more 3. They think that $0.99 is a bad price from a customer psychology standpoint. This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but I think (3) is an interesting point. If $.99 is now the de facto "cheap impulse buy" price point, is it possible that television execs don't want people thinking about TV that way? When watching a TV show can be compared with a fun little iPhone game or a single song, does it stop being a compelling purchase? I think they'd rather that people feel they need a recurring subscription to television, or pay much more per episode to get a "permanent" archive of it. Both mechanisms encourage people to overindulge in and overvalue television, while individual payments for rented shows do not.