TV Piracy is Next

Blackfire writes "Why is a TV executive so agitated about online pirates? Because he, like most media honchos, has seen the scary numbers indicating that the next big craze in illegal file-sharing is not music, not movies, but television." Frankly I'm amazed that movies caught on before TV since there's so much more TV, and they tend to be smaller files than movies.

Comments

TV piracy is next?

[Carrot007]

See that over there?

That is the boat, you have missed it.

Seriously, this has been going on for years.

I remember downloading auful real encoded southpark season 1 and 2 episodes on dial up. ICK, that was painfull.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[gilesjuk]

Definitely and when you see the ludicrous cost of DVD boxsets for some TV shows you can see why.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[bampot]

This guy is making the assumption that people want to download shows in the first place

Me, I'm going the other way because it just occurred to me I'm paying £XX/month for:

• Far too much 3rd rate trashy "reality tv" crap
• Far too many "foreign" programs bought in (no offence to the US intended)
• 20 mins of adverts per/hour. If I pay for it, I shouldn't have to watch adverts.
• Even with 6 zillion channels there is never anything on
• on-screen graphics, (and the possibility of this space being used for advertising)
• reaching for the remote to turn the volume down every time the adverts come on. I'M NOT STUPID OR DEAF. IT WON'T MAKE ME BUY YOUR STUFF.

Just recently I've found myself watching program A, then the adverts start. Rather than watch them I channel-flick and start watching program B. Then forget I was even watching program A until more adverts come on.

Damn.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Hieronymus Howard]

You're right. This is nothing new. I don't watch TV, so only got into Buffy when a friend asked me to download some episodes for him, as I had adsl. This was a few of years ago when broadband was quite rare. I ended up watching them with him and was hooked. Since then, I've bought six boxed sets of Buffy and Angel DVDs and am planning on buying more. Another case of piracy leading to sales that they wouldn't otherwise have had.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[BlackHawk-666]

I also do exactly this. I hate watching TV because of all the ads and the fact that each pay channel usually only has 1 or 2 shows that are worth watching, forcing you to buy the whol damn lot just to get the few shows you want. I opted out years ago and started downloading instead. My time is worth something, and if I can see a movie with a running time of 90 mins in 90 mins instead of 120 mins that 30 mins I just saved right there - and no, I'm not incontinent and don't need a four minute toilet break every ten minutes.

Lately, I have really been upping my anime fetish, and the shows I like aren't even available in the US in most cases, let alone the UK, so I download fansubs and buy the DVD's when/if they get released.

But why buy the DVD's when I downloaded it already for free? Because I still believe content creators should be paid.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 13ep at 22min is 286min, or 4h46m. Failing math, huh? =)

Re:TV piracy is next?

[1u3hr]

, a season of most shows is usually 13 episodes. At around 22 minutes each, you're buying 260 HOURS of programming..

22min x 13 = 286 minutes = 4.8 hours.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[boaworm]

Well, you mention $40. Tried buying Star Trek TNG on DVD ?
Amazon retails them for just over $100 /season. (including their 25 % discount). That would make me pretty poor if i'd buy the 7 seasons.

Perhaps Friends is cheaper as you say, but that's not true for all TV series.

When someone tries to charge something like $700 for some plastic material with IP produced in 87-94.. i think that's close to robbery. (Not that i can use that as an argument to steal it, but nevertheless, i understand those who do).

Re:TV piracy is next?

[Tassach]

$700 is also probably a lot less than you would have to buy for the rights to all those shows, so you should be thankful that DVD brings an otherwise UNATAINABLE creative license to you.

Yeah, but it's a lot more than a spindle of DVD-Rs.

FYI, it is still *LEGAL* to record a TV show for your personal use. If I want all 7 seasons of TNG on DVD, all I need is a video capture card, SpikeTV's broadcast schedule, a simple shell script, and a small investment of time to edit out the commercials and burn the disks. If Paramount wants me to PAY for something I can *LEGALLY* get for next to nothing, they have to make it worth my while. Better image quality is a start, but it isn't worth an order of magnitude price difference.

$100 for the WHOLE SERIES RUN is a more realistic assessment of the real value -- at that price it's almost worth it to me to get the nice box set rather than collecting the episodes over the course of a couple months.

Re:TV piracy is next?

[badasscat]

How about not having the damnned annoying spike logo in the corner, the stretch and squish games they do with the image, the commercials and parts of the show cut out because the 45 minutes of program time (15 mins for commercials) that was done back in the 80's and 90's is now too long for the now 17-20 commercial times we now have.

I don't remember if Spike does that but Sci-Fi channel cut out many parts of the original Star Trek to make room for commercials.

Spike clearly advertises that their Trek is "uncut".

Anyway, though, your point allows me to perfectly illustrate my point, which is that it seems to me there's a perfectly acceptable solution to TV "piracy" staring TV execs right in the face and they simply fail to acknowledge it.

Make all TV shows available for download, for free.

TV execs will look at this and say "bah! It's our IP! You don't just give IP away!" Well, yes you do. I don't pay anything for over-the-air broadcasts (even in high def!), and while I do pay a cable bill, that bill's going to the cable company for maintenance of the infrastructure - it's not going to the broadcast TV networks (or even to most of the cable networks, who are ad supported). Most TV stations give their content away gratis every day of the week.

I don't see why a TV station couldn't put whatever bugs they want in the corner and include commercials with their downloads (people will find a way to skip them however hard they make it to fast forward, but then what else is new? People have been doing that for years with VCR's, nevermind TiVo). The perceived value to advertisers shouldn't be any different, because I mean look. Either downloading is a small issue and therefore it shouldn't matter either to advertisers or the networks, or it's rampant and growing, in which case those advertisers would at least want the chance to reach all those eyes, rather than just sitting on the sidelines while ad-stripped copies of shows float around on bittorrent sites.

Now, there would be issues to work out with affiliates, syndicators, etc. who sell their own advertising, often locally. But so what? Issues can be worked out for the good of the industry; it's actually a rather minor change in how TV business is done in the grand scheme of things. You work out some sort of revenue-sharing deal and voila: done. And of course, TV still needs to be broadcast live before it can be downloaded, so the affiliates still get their local advertising in anyway.

One quick example - I remember when the Jon Stewart Crossfire interview aired, and afterwards there was a big story about how more people had shared and downloaded a digitized version of it than had actually watched the show in the first place. This is an extreme case right now (though it will happen more and more over time), and CNN was completely pissed about it, but I saw more than one journalist suggest that instead of whining about it, CNN could have driven people to their web site and could have promoted the show a lot better by simply making it available for free download themselves. I don't see how you can really argue with that - the downloads happened anyway, wouldn't it be better for the network to get some traffic and marketing out of it themselves rather than just ceding that market to the file sharers?

If TV shows were available for free download from network web sites, very few people are going to take the illegal route in stripping out the non-program material and then sharing them on file sharing sites. Sure, some people will, but those are the same people who'd rip or download the DVD's and share them too; they're pretty hardcore pirates, and they're not going to pay for your stuff regardless. It seems to me the idea is to keep the 99% of viewers who aren't pirates from becoming pirates, not to convert the 1% who are pirates into paying customers (a futile goal).

Of course, DVD's would still be made available at some future date, sans commercials and

I love TV

[koan]

When I can download it with no commercials, that's how I get my dailyshow.
If I have to pay 49$'s a month for cable why do I have to have commercials.

Re:I love TV

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

Not really.

The advert revenue on cable allows the cable company to reduces the cost to the subscriber*, effectively the cable subscriber is paying for their subscription in two ways: money and viewing time.

With cable internet it's a different kettle of fish: the subsciber's $49 goes to the cable company, but the revenue from the advertisement doesn't go anywhere near the cable company, it is used by the site maintainer to pay for bandwidth costs. In this case the cable internet subscriber is paying their subscription and the costs of a third party.

The two cases aren't really equivalent: the former is a simple trade of one cost for another, the latter is two costs - one from the cable company and one from the website owner.

* as long as you assume that the cost of the subscription really is > $49. Which it probably isn't, but such is the way of business.

TV episodes from BitTorrent

[My Iron Lung]

It's true. I don't even make the effort to watch shows at their designated times anymore. I'll go and download the latest episode of CSI in about 15 minutes and watch it with much higher quality video and sound, and no commercial breaks. How will the industry adapt?

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Chicane-UK]

Lots more lawsuits perhaps?

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[nano2nd]

The industry SHOULD and COULD adapt to this by offering their own high quality copies of TV episodes via BitTorrent.

The TV companies would be in control of their content again and would be free to include advertising. This is a whole new distribution medium for them with virtually no operating costs (due to the highly distributed nature of BitTorrent). Any revenue generated by advertising in this channel would be total profit!

I would be happy to download "official" torrents that included ads rather than take my chances with dodgy video and lipsync etc.

Unfortunately, the TV companies will probably try to wrap it up in some evil DRM to prevent other people cutting the ads out and seeding the high-quality ad-free versions.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[My Iron Lung]

Lawsuits at first, but like the copyrighted music swapping industry, it's never going to be stamped out. The music industry is already learning that they must embrace mp3s or die, and someday the television industry is going to have to wake up and smell the coffee as well. Between TiVo, the internet, and broadband internet, how can television advertising stand a chance? True that the percentage of people actually watching televion must be huge compared to the number of people watching TV shows off the internet.. but as the technology becomes more easily adapted and readily available, there are going to be a lot less people viewing television commercials.

Re:TV episodes from BitTorrent

[Random_Goblin]

Unfortunately, the TV companies will probably try to wrap it up in some evil DRM to prevent other people cutting the ads out and seeding the high-quality ad-free versions.

I know this is perhaps a controversial view on /. but DRM isn't evil per se.

There is nothing wrong with a company wishing to protect its investment, and to be paid for its product.

The point at which it becomes evil is when it is used a vehicle for out-dated commercial models.

I believe most people would rather have a legitimate copy of something rather than a pirate, and would even pay money for that legitimacy. The problem facing owners of digital media, is HOW MUCH money are they prepared to pay. If the cost is too great, $15 for a CD, people will quite happily justify piracy to themselves.

I also think many IP owners fall into the mistake of thinking that better DRM will enable them to keep their prices higher. But as we all know once someone finds out how to crack their security, the high prices serves to fuel the market for pirates.

As an aside, having watched american adverts and english adverts, i notice a huge difference in approach. Correct me if i'm wrong, but in the US an advert treats you like a moron who will buy anything cause a guy with white perfect teeth say's it will change your life.

In the UK, our advertisers pander to our sense of intellectual superiority. Here the message tends to be, obviously we as advertisers know YOU are far too clever to fall for our marketing, but here is a clever and amusing advert, which you can pretend not to be influenced by. For an example of this sort of english ad check out some of tango's ads.. compare them to coke or pepsi for example who would have you believe a coke/pepsi can save the world... Tango on the other hand asks you to "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough!"

In my experience lots of british people like watching adverts, (tango's website lets you e-mail the ads to people). The challenge faced by TV producers now is not to try and stop this new technology, but work out how to make it work for them. Making adverts that people don't mind watching is where i think their future lies.

Uh, no.

[Paska]

Sorry, I don't buy this crap. I used to work in Win Television (Australia's largest regional television station, 7million viewers) and I can say that privacy was not even a minor concern.

The major concern executives are having, is trying to ensure video tape operations do not put in commercials into the wrong aspect ratio, The shows airing on TV do not mean crap to the executive, it's the commercials paying his wage.

I was trained to make sure, in the worst case situation. That the commercials go to air, even if that meant the TV show itself was just one nice black screen.

been doing this for ages

[xirtam_work]

my friends have been downloading american series for years because we haveto wait ages for them to show in the UK. also you need cable or satelite to get many of the new shows and tennacy agreements do not allow you to put up a satelite dish in most instances and cable tv is only available in limited areas.

I watch enterprise, SG1, atlantis, alias, etc. before they're shown on tv over here. eventually when the dvd's become available i end up buying quite a few of them as well. i don't think the studios are loosing anything major whilst this is happening. in fact they're building a bigger fan base than they would have anyway. it's the tb stations that loose out on the advertising revenue

Movies before TV

[SnAzBaZ]

The reason movies caught on before TV is because generally the two work differently. A movie you have to make a conscious choice that you want to watch it, you have to take steps to watch a specific film. TV is something you might flick on to see if there is anything interesting on.

Also 90% of TV is very low quality crap, so why would anyone waste their bandwidth downloading it. Films caught on before TV because they are much more 'worthy' of the bandwidth. Most of TV, with the exclusion of the occasional good documentary or high quality series (think 24, Friends, Simpsons, etc) is 'throw away' stuff that you watch mindlessly and forget about, and none of that stuff is something you'd ever download voluntarily (or randomly).

Old Idea

[Lesrahpem]

This has already been an issue once. I don't know if anyone else does, but I remember the frenzy about people being able to record television using a VCR.

All that aside, what do they really have to lose from people recording TV shows and showing them to other people? It's not like all TV is pay-per-view or anything like that. Yeah, so people who don't have cable or satellite might see some TV without paying for a subscription. These people wouldn't be paying for a subscription anyway, so no one is really at a loss. If anything, I think it might cause people to be more likely to switch to cable or satellite.

they didn't

[Punto]

movies _didn't_ catch on before TV.. you can find a torrent for almost any tv show (but mostly fiction and reality crap) every week. 4 years ago it used to be mostly people from europe who didn't get the shows on their tv, downloading from IRC (or southamerican, in my case).. Now, with the widescreen episodes captured from HDTV on nice fast torrents, who knows?

WtF?

[thewldisntenuff]

Hmph...."next big craze in illegal file-sharing", eh?

What the hell? How is trading copies of broadcast television shows illegal? Since when is it piracy to copy and share copies of tv shows THAT ARE ON TV? I pay my dues in cable bills, so how the hell is it illegal? Recording shows to VHS has been done plenty of times - and you'd think they'd want you to watch the shows again and again....I don't see the logic or the losses involved here. Either way you end up seeing the show (commercial free or not)...

TFA states that people will have "no need to spring for satellite feeds or specialty channels" Hell, some specialty channels are a waste anyway...I mean, who needs 6 ESPNs, or 5 Discovery channels, or 10 friggin HBOs? I think some people would still hang on to their channels anyway...Its still a hell of a lot easier (for most) to watch tv at 6 than download and play clips offline. They make it sound like everyone's going to drop their cable services and rely on the downloading and recording of one lone pirate with an eye patch and a rouge TiVO....

TFA also states a line about "In his forum speech, Chernin said: "Consumers need to understand that stealing is wrong, and there are consequences." "

When the fuck did free use become a dirty word? Stealing? Bah!

What a good way to start Thanksgiving leftovers...

-thewldisntenuff

Hey

[cubicledrone]

Mr. Media Executive? If you're looking for a "major concern," how about the fact that most of the shows suck harder than an industrial vacuum hooked up to a gas turbine?

Have you watched the shit you're shoveling lately? It is awful. Face-down in bubbling warm shit awful. It's enough to make a brave man weep into a PA system.

And then the commercials. Oh great humpity fuck, some of the commercials on television are enough to make someone want to projectile vomit their shoes for a 90-yard touchdown. It wouldn't be so bad if they weren't broadcast at intervals more frequent than a dry-heaving hummingbird. And yes, most of the people watching have already re-financed their house eight times this week.

Try working on the quality, there, Captain Meetings. Maybe then people will actually watch your channel.

Re:iShows

[Zorilla]

Dude, that comes out to somewhere around 5.50 USD these days. I'll pass!

Mods: It's a joke

TV Piracy is a godsend...

[absolut_kurant]

No way I could otherwise watch unsynchronized TV shows (I live in Austria), there isn't even the option of e.g. watching the Simpsons in English here (except waiting a few years for the DVD release). So much subtle nuance is lost and so many glaring errors are made in translation it's not even funny. Very frustrating. My thanks to all Americans making their TV shows available via Bittorrent.

There are reasons why people do that

[fobsen]

For example:
I'm living in Germany and I don`t have any opportunity to watch the series in the original language. You probably won't understand how horrible it is to watch a translated comedy-show compared to the original one. Wordplays: gone. The quality of the series itself is simply not the same.

Another thing is that we have to wait for a long time until the new series from the U.S. are translated and running on TV here. (for example: The last season of "Sex and the City" is still running here. Or "Scrubs": Season 4 runing in the US - still waiting for Season 3 to start in Germany.)

I'm sorry for being unable to support my favourite series in the US by watching the channels they are running on, but i simply don't have an other chance to do that.

The next craze!

[lxs]

Since we're all way ahead of the curve here, (let's face it TV shows have been around on P2P networks for ages) let me take this opportunity to announce the Next Big Thing:

Sheet Music piracy.

After all, everything else is being shared already.

Introducing Cleffster a P2P utility written in C# especially for the sharing of scanned sheet music.

(And if that network really exists I'll eat my tinfoil hat.)

authorized downloads with ads inserted?

[vinsci]

From the article:

For the real solution, media moguls might refer to Chernin's first rule of survival -- the one about consumers wanting control, choice and convenience. Logging onto the Net and quickly downloading your favourite show in HDTV fulfills that principle. Until makers of entertainment can satisfy this desire, the piracy fight is likely to keep getting bloodier.

I've been wondering for a long time why they don't simply set up a well-working torrent tracker that serves torrents with real, paid ads inserted in the material. This should work great for TV-based media, which is mostly prepared for hosting ads anyway.

Ads could be inserted with an overlapping, rolling, three-week schedule, for example - at any time there'd be - say - three different torrents of the same show, differing only in ad contents. The ad contents would get updated on a weekly bases then, thus serving fresh ads all the time, while not breaking away too far from the well-working torrent distribution model. It's been said many times before: all other industries would be overjoyed by getting free distribution of their product - how long until the TV industry figures out how to do ads online and start providing free highquality downloads?

By the way, you can watch a recording (in various formats) of Larry Lessig's interesting and entertaining talk on Free Culture in Helsinki in May 2004 here.

All those Startrek, Stargate and Galactica Geeks

[Open Council]

All those Startrek, Stargate and Galactica Geeks probably have PCs (even Macs maybe) and are into P2P filesharing.

Major TV series are usually broadcast in the US well ahead of their UK and european dates. When "Enterprise" first aired in the states, months ahead of its arrival in the UK, there was considerable traffic in DivX copies of the episodes. The same thing didn't happen with the latest series of Stargate because of the lack of reasonably small copies.

The "protection" that DVD producers have to stop the US discs playing outside the US didn't stop online sharing. Now the same thing is happening with regionally transmitted TV.

The TV producers are also worried because so much content goes on on subscription channels, so free access costs them profits.

It interesting that the BBC, who provide programs free here in the UK are worried by transatlantic access . They are about to provide free access to their program archives but have two problems..

1) The UK taxpayer pays for the programs to be made and expects that non-UK viewers should pay for access.

2) the BBC is very good about paying appearance money to actors appearing in old programs reshown on TV. They want to find a way of compensating actors for online distribution.

TV is actually worse than movies...

[Kjella]

TV providers seem to have missed this little thing called "globalization". I'm from Norway. I talk to people from US, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland regularly. Imagine the following conversations:

A: "Have you seen [movie title] yet? It's really cool"
B: "Cool. I'll go to the cinema next week and see it"

A: "Have you seen [TV series] yet? It's really cool"
B: "No. Come ask again in a few years, when it'll be on TV here. That is, if it is popular enough to be internationally sold at all. And if it is priced so reasonably that some TV channel picks it up."
A: "Wanna download it from me?"

The movie industry has understood this. The TV industry has not. Gun, meet foot.

Kjella

Re:TV is actually worse than movies...

[rcs1000]

Spare me the anti-capitalist bullshit.

Globalisation is aided and abetted by consumers and workers (who *gasp* are the same people). You buy a French wine in the US... you're supporting globalisation. Heck, you read a US web-site like Slashdot in the UK... that's globalisation.

Globalisation is an inevitable consequence of a levelling of the playing field (Indian programmers can now compete with US ones; good for them) due to falling costs of transporting goods and information. You can erect barriers if you like (Bhutan has), or tear down the technologies causing globalisation - but don't forget that when you buy a Sony TV, or a Dell PC, or a piece of Fench brie, or a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book.

Yep, you're supporting and encouraging globalisation.

Corporations have a duty to their shareholders to make money. This is nothing new.

Re:Ok

[Mance Rayder]

They're being broadcast for free in the first place. What's the difference?

Commercials. If advertisers know their audience won't see their commercials, they lose incentive to invest in advertising, and the networks lose money.
I don't think it's a big issue yet, but it might be someday soon. I'm personally frustrated as hell with how long it takes to get shows to DVD -- I can understand why others tire of waiting years for a single goddamn season, then putting out $60-80 for it.
Television networks can avoid the same mistakes the RIAA has made by adapting to technology and setting up a legal alternative to piracy before television piracy begins in earnest. If they start churning out DVDs now instead of infuriating the consumer with slow marketing to squeeze every drop of money possible out of each season, and dare I think it lowering the insanely high prices on these DVDs, I can see television shows becoming far more profitable than they are today. Imagine, if they sell the latest episode online or mail-order DVD for, what, $5 after airing it? (Probably less, but then the average twelve-episode season wouldn't cost $60.) I can see them making some serious money.
But that would require that the status quo change, so, yeah, hold your breath.

Instant solution

[Cynikal]

How about you give me a website or something where i can watch my favorite shows when i get home from work (at 4am), even if its 3 weeks or even 3 months since the show aired. let me download the show in hi def quallity, put whatever commercials you want in it (dont go overboard), give me a source to get it from at 300+k/sec, rather than the horrid 30k/sec i get off a p2p server, and give me a way to catch that eppisode i missed 3 months ago, or even watch the whole series when *I* have the time. or does the concept of flexibility and catoring to your customers' needs a bit too far outside the box?

i am a tv subscriber, i am your customer, if you dont provide me a viable means to watch what i want to watch, when i want to watch it, i will find someone who does. the only question for you is are you going to piss and moan about it, or will you join the 21st century and continue to do bussiness with me and people like me? whether you like it or not, unless your job title is "old wooden shoe maker" you are in an industry of changes, where the survival code is adapt or die off...

I am a couch potato, and this is my manifesto...

Ahem, hello? http://tvtorrents.net/

[JPamplin]

*A friend of mine* has been enjoying http://tvtorrents.net/ for a while now. And, yes it is the best thing - No TiVo, no ads, HDTV quality and usually 350MB per hour of DivX encoded video. Plus you can search.

Just check the site the day after airing, and pull down the torrent. The HDTV-LOL versions are some of the best for Galactica, Lost, all the hot shows.

According to my friend, that is. ;-)

JP

Re:No DVD

[Mycroft_VIII]

But what if I had recorded every epsode that was BRODCAST for FREE over the air?
The difference is only in mechanism, not result. I have a friend who managed to tape every episode of st:tng, now if he were to transfer those to computer and clean all the comercials out watch them off the hard-drive, how is his result any different than someone who downloaded those episodes?
How is one copyright infringement (for him), where the other is leagaly allowed time-shifting which the supreme court upheld as fair use. Or rather how does it make sense to have the distinction.
The tv show's producers made thier money by selling advertising when it was originally broadcast. Unlike movies (well recently they've added blantant comercials, and they've had 'product placement' for some time) which derive thier revenue from theatrical release and sales of individual copies.

Mycroft

Re:Question

[TheRaven64]

The important question is; is it actually illegal? If I subscribe to a TV channel that broadcasts a show, fail to watch it, and then download it, was that illegal? If I record it on a tape or a TiVo-like device and watch it later, then it was not illegal (under time-shifting rulings). The internal workings of a VCR and a TiVo are very different, but they are treated by law as black box devices that allow a broadcast TV programme to be time-shifted. A computer connected to the Internet is doing exactly the same thing - time-shifting a programme that has been broadcast. The only difference is that it operates retroactively (i.e. you can choose to time-shift something after it has been broadcast, rather than before, which is usually more convenient).

The next question is; if this is legal, what happens if you download it before it is aired, but don't watch it until afterwards? Again, from a black-box user's perspective, this is no different from using a TiVo or a VCR. In fact, it is more similar than the first case, since you are performing the time-shift action before the airing as you do with a VCR or TiVo. I would very much like to see this defence used in court. If the court views it as legal then it could almost certainly be extended to include any song that has been broadcast on public radio or film that has been shown on TV.

Of course, the question is moot if you are downloading things that have not been broadcast on channels you to which you are subscribed.

Availability

[Xolotl]

As has been said by some of the earlier posters, a lot of shows are not available in many parts of the world, where they would have an audience but for whatever reason the local networks are unwilling to show them.

This is particularly true of the SF shows such as Start Trek, Stargate SG-1 etc. which are often considered "niche" compared to comedy or soap opera. As an example, where I live, the local networks either don't bother to buy the shows or sometimes buy one season, show it at a ridiculous time like 11am or 12pm, then axe it while complaining that nobody watches it (happened to SG-1, Voyager, Nikita). Unfortunately that way everbody loses.

What the producers don't seem to understand is that they could actually profit from putting these shows online themselves, bypassing the local networks, either at a nominal fee (one or two USD) or even with advertising included (which could be generated automatically and targeted to the downloaders's region). Alternatively, using Bittorent or the like their bandwithd and distrbution costs would be minimal and they could push mechandise (T-shirts, DVDs whatever) as a profit source.

With the right model there is a a huge market and a lot of money to be made, just the networks seem to be stuck in a mental rut, anthe rest of us download TV rips