iRony

On an upcoming episode of NBC’s new drama “Journeyman,” Dan Vassar (Kevin McKidd), the man who’s become a ping-pong ball paddled by random forces through the fabric of time, is seen briefly consulting his iPhone (how he was able to afford one on his newspaper reporter’s salary is beyond me). Paradoxically, Dan will never be able to watch an episode of his program on his iPhone because, as we’ve noted, NBC and Apple parted company over haggling over pricing of downloaded episodes, NBC moving to amazon.com, whose system doesn’t accommodate Mac users.

Today, NBC.com announced NBC Direct, in which you don’t even have to spring the $1.99-per-episode (let alone the $4.99 NBC was reportedly wanting) to download episodes of your favorite shows. You do, on the other hand, have to sit through commercials to watch them, and you do have to view them in a timely fashion because the files will expire after a week. And you do have to only want to watch "Heroes," "The Office," "Life," "Bionic Woman," "30 Rock," "Friday Night
Lights," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" and "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” when the beta version of this service launches next month, because that’s all that will offered initially.

And, still, you can’t own a Mac, though NBC says that as they work the bugs out of the system over the next few months Mac fans will eventually be invited to the party.