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Time on "Pirates of Primetime"
binarydreams writes "Time has a pretty decent article on the capturing and trading of television shows on the Internet. The author gives a very good description of the capturing process, the people who enjoy the results, the future of PVR (focusing on the Replay 4000) and why the TV and movie industries are scared."
This is just more of the TV industry coming to grips
with what happened to the music industry. But it's
important that the mainstream learns about it.
...it pried open a Pandora's jewel box: Last year CD sales declined for the first time in a decade.
it would be interesting to see the % fall in this versus the general economic downturn. otherwise its a meaningless statement.
I am against pirating stuff en-masse (i.e. Napster, posting on websites). One-off trading shouldn't be a big concern to the content holders. If I tape a show and give it to a friend, yes, that's illegal, but it's essentially insignificant because it's usually more trouble than its worth, its uncommon, and its a drop in the bucket. I doubt I'd ever be prosecuted for loaning a copy of Star Trek that was just on yesterday to a friend who forgot to tape it.
However, the prevalence of trading shows that there is a demand for this stuff. Why not make it available for sale? Who says that shows need to be off-the-air for a couple of years before they're made available? Who says that only the most popular shows should be made available?
Why isn't the distribution process streamlined so that printing 5000 DVDs for the 5000 people who want to see "Cop Rock" is still profitable?
There are plenty of TV shows that I would gladly purchase on DVD. I was happy to see "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 1" on DVD -- not because I want to buy it, but because I'm hoping that means that shows like "Kojak, Season 1" make it.
I suspect that the media companies are at a crossroads. Do they sell their content and possibly ruin the repeat-TV market, or do they hold it close and risk people trading it among themselves?
Ralph Slate
IMO, there are two types of people who trade tv shows:
1. People who have already seen the show and want to view it again at a later date. These people have already seen the ads from the commercial sponsers from the first airing.
2. People who are the fan base of the show. These people archive the episodes for their own enjoyment. These people also probably view the shows during their original airing rather than waiting for the show to appear somewhere over the internet.
Both populations of people have probably seen the original airing of the program with the commericals in place. The only valid concern I can think of from the TV industry is that sponsers may not pay for ads during reruns of a particular show if viewers already have copies of it to watch. But how many of us sit down to watch a rerun of a episode we have already seen? Unless it rocked, most of us I imagine probably end up surfing the TV during breaks anyways. Reruns really only serve the population of people who didn't see the episode in the original airing. It seems to me that the industry wants to keep this population away from recorded TV shows.
As someone else noted, in the current scheme of television production and distribution, we the viewers are NOT the customer. We are the product that is harvested, packaged, and delivered to the real customer: the advertisers.
Once you understand that, the rest makes perfect sense.
I don't know what the figures are for the studios, but I did see a comment in a UK PC magazine once that to produce the same content without any advertising at all would increase the shelf price from £5 to £25. Quite a hike. Would you be prepared to see your cable/satellite bill go up by the same percentage just to lose the adverts? Plus the additional amount to cover the costs of those who say stuff it and cancel their subscriptions?
I'm guessing that for the majority of viewers the answer will be a resounding "NO WAY!"
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
The TV networks should be flattered that anyone would want to "pirate" their crap.
You're willfully missing the point. It's not popularity that makes money for the networks, it's advertising, which online pirates strip out, or VHS/DVD purchases, which *probably* aren't being made.
Unlike MP3 swapping, there's a HUGE difference between watching a quarter-screen pixelated copy of a show and seeing it on my 32" television, but that's clearly not a big deal for many viewers, and in any case, it WILL change as technology and bandwidth progresses.
The networks are losing money on this, and that's why they're upset. They don't care if you watch it, they only care if you watch it with the commercials in.
IMO, there are two types of people who trade tv shows
...and a third: people who don't get the channels, or can't rent or afford to buy the DVDs, but want to watch the shows all their friends are raving about.
Don't pretend that third group doesn't exist. The article mentions "Sex in the City" and "Friends," but if you go online you don't have to look far to find shows and movies that are only available in recorded format. People wouldn't be swapping ripped copies of anime imports or "Shrek" -- not available on TV but expensive on tape/DVD -- if that was the case.
"The MPAA counted more than 5,000 locations on the Internet last year where people could download episodes for free."
... as opposed to watching the broadcast for free?
The networks already got their money, and they didn't get it from the viewers. The advertisers paid for the broadcast and there shouldn't be anything more to ask for (unless they want to take the position of cable companies where they charge both the advertier and the viewer). If the networks don't feel like they're getting enough money then they should be talking to the people that actually pay for it, and if the advertisers won't pay any more than that's your problem, not mine.
The shows are being broadcast whether I like them or not. My TV received those broadcasts but either wasn't on or was focused on a different channel at the time. I also have the right to record such broadcasts whether I watch it at the time of recording or not. While it's true that it's copyrighted matieral, giving the networks the ability to control what they themselves distributed to anybody and everybody free of charge is ridiculous. If this keeps up will the networks attempt to have a say in the affairs of TV and VCR manufacturers to "help the networks defend their rights?"
Consumers don't want to play by the network's rules. In a capitalist society it is the network that must adapt to the situation, not the consumer.
And that is the fundamental problem with the TV networks.
In the 50s and 60s, you watched networks. Just as there were Ford people and there were Chevy people, there were people who watched "NBC" or "CBS" or "ABC".
Today, I don't know anyone who gives a rat's fried patoot what network, nor even what channel, their programming is on. We watch shows, not networks.
And that's why the woman in the article won't pay for HBO. She doesn't want "HBO". She only wants to watch "Sex in the City", and if she could pay $1/month to watch 1 hour of HBO's programming (that is, the new episode of "Sex in the City") a week, she would.
But she can't. Because HBO doesn't work like that. Because the cable system doesn't work like that. The whole notion of "broadcasting" (and this includes "niche channels") is that you fill the pipe 24/7 with content, charge your viewers for all that content, even though they only want one or two shows you offer.
It's not quite the same as the RIAA model of "put one good song on the album, the rest can be filler", because your idea of filler might be my idea of content. (That is, some folks watch highbrow channels for the Shakespeare, others for the war documentaries, still others for the Red Dwarf reruns ;-)
But the practical effect is the same -- an end user buys a subscription to a channel in order to get the hour or two of "good stuff" per week that they care about.
Cable makes it worse, of course, in that underlying technical restrictions have created buyers used to buying "packages" of 10-20 channels at a time in order to get the 2-3 channels that carry the 4-5 shows you watch. It's not like buying a whole CD to get the one song you want, it's like buying a whole box set!
Now comes the 'net - we bypass the high-level middlemen (cable/satellite operators) and the low-level middlemen ("channels") to allow an individual to get the product ("shows") they actually want. In effect, the 'net makes the traditional distribution system ("shows" aggregated onto "channels" and sold in "packages of channels") obsolete.
The woman who says "Fuck that!" and downloads her Sex in the City isn't saying "Fuck copyright".
She's saying "Fuck the dumb distribution system".