Staci D. Kramer reports that Lifetime will not offer Project Runway on iTunes. You can watch it on Lifetime’s website starting two days after it airs, but that’s it. This quote by Lifetime Digital’s Dan Suratt shows, characteristically, that Lifetime still thinks of the internet as a nuisance that detracts from their real business of television: “I think what it really goes to is we firmly believe in the power of our site to drive people to our channel and that’s what we use it for.” Because clearly everyone gets Lifetime. And wants to watch your show on Thursday nights, and certainly would make time in their schedules if only they saw a glimpse of it online. Because while you can’t stop the internet, you can funnel traffic to your site where at least you can limit the damage. Forget Hulu, which offers a nice user experience with lots of shows from different networks. Forget iTunes, where people will actually pay you to download a show. Just build a site and force people who don’t want to/can’t watch Lifetime to watch your show on a tiny computer screen instead of their nice, big TVs.
So yeah, I’m bitter. I really like Project Runway. I have an Apple TV and prefer watching shows on my TV instead of my laptop enough that I’ll (gasp) actually pay for episodes, yet they don’t want my money.