Stop iTunes from downloading old TV shows.

I don't use the iTunes Store so you will have to see if this helps:

iTunes Store: Hiding and unhiding purchases - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4919 - http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201322

I have this problem OFTEN with past Daily Show episodes. Just this morning, in fact, iTunes tried to download 1300+ (yes, 1300+) episodes of The Daily Show, dating all the way back to 2006.

When I called iTunes Support on the phone, the completely unhelpful person asked me for the serial number on my computer. I told her that the problem wasn't with my computer, that the problem was with iTunes itself, and she was completely unwilling to help me. I've had this problem before, and an Apple support technician simply went in and cleared my download queue for me (a feature that individual users should have the ability to do) but I can't figure out how to get back to the person who helped me last time, because this receptionist insisted that nobody could help me if I wasn't using an Apple computer.

This issue is not going away. Apple needs to fix iTunes. Nothing needs fixing on my computer.

Okay folks, there is absolutely only one way, and one way only to make iTunes stop downloading things, filling up your hard drive, and crashing your system. EVERYTHING ELSE DOES NOT WORK.

You basically need to make it impossible for iTunes to write to its download area on your hard drive. This is a drastic solution, but again, EVERYTHING ELSE DOES NOT WORK. iTunes in its current state is a completely failed, broken product.

Note: this will delete all downloaded iTunes movies/tv shows currently on your Mac. This is the trade-off I had to make until Apple fixes iTunes.

1. Go to the command line.

2. cd Music/iTunes

3. sudo su (enter your login password)

4. chown root:admin iTunes\ Media

5. chmod 755 iTunes\ Media

5. rm -Rf iTunes\ Media\Downloads

6. rm -Rf iTunes\ Media\TV\ Shows

7. rm -Rf iTunes\ Media\Movies

Now when iTunes starts, it will try to download all of your content (even though you've told it not to in Preferences it does it anyhow). However this time it will display an error: it won't download the content, it won't fill up your hard drive, it won't crash your system when your hard drive fills up, it won't clog your Internet connection for 8 hours--it will just die, like software written this way deserves to die.

And you can use the rest of iTunes as you do normally.

Finally! this was the only thing that ended up working, for now at least.

at first changing the preferences like everyone said worked. until i tried to update my phone. then it tried to download all my tv shows again. and the iPhone update was sitting at the bottom of the queue. i ended up having to update through my phone instead of iTunes on the computer.

but then afterwards it kept trying to download the tv shows even though all the boxes in preferences were unchecked.

there are literally a hundred articles online talking about this problem and none of them had an answer that worked.

so far this is the only thing that ended up working. cross my fingers it stays that way now.