UK Leads in TV Show Downloading

dirutz writes "Britain has emerged as the world's biggest market for downloading pirated TV, with Australia being the second and the U.S. sitting at third. Among the top pirated TV shows, '24' ranks the first. 'The Simpsons,' 'Enterprise,' 'Stargate SG-1' and 'Battlestar Galactica' are also among the top hitters." 'Pirated' seems a strong word, at least for watching those programs which have been beamed (unencrypted) through my body. Where can I pay a quarter per show for moderate-quality, sanctioned torrent files?

Comments

A quarter a show?

[rm999]

I don't think they will ever sell shows for that cheap because DVD sales are becoming very popular for TV. Why would you pay 30 dollars for season 2 of family guy when you could download the whole season for 5 bucks?

Re:A quarter a show?

[JohnstonDJ]

I half agree with this comment. It's all about setting a price for the good you are recieving. VHS's drastically dropped in price because you could get far better sound/video quality on DVD, with a whole lot of extra's. (and we were promised that dvd would have a longer life than vhs, but I am really yet to see that)

DVD gave you more bang for your buck, and for that extra bang, you have to pay more. There is definatly still a market for the VHS, for people who just want to see the video, and don't really want the extras and have the superior video/sound quality, and because they dont want this they get the film at a highly discounted rate.

I believe thats why being able to legally download a tv-show for a $1 an episode won't kill the dvd industry because a video clip on your computer, is a whole lot different to having a brand spanking new dvd in your hand to watch in your personal home theatre with 5.1 sound and amazing picture quality.

I also believe that it might fuel DVD sales. I believe this because if it only costs say $1 per show then people might be a bit more adventerous and buy shows which they wouldn't just go buy the dvd of. And if they like these shows, they would like to get all the extra stuff that the dvd gives, and hence go out and buy the dvd.

Re:A quarter a show?

[Gid1]

I have the whole of Buffy, B5, Farscape, West Wing, and a bunch of other shows, all on (legal) DVD. I had seen every single episode on terrestrial TV or (more recently) on BitTorrent before buying them. Part of the reason I still buy the DVDs is the special features and part is just the accessibility of it.

In fact, with some shows, I've bought twice. The West Wing is almost a year behind on DVD in the States but has better features. So, I buy the Region 2 first, then the Region 1 a year later. In this respect, I've been suckered by studios playing dumb marketing games.

The only reason I download things is when I can't get them somewhere else (release date, stupid channels, etc). However, I can't think of a single thing I've downloaded that I haven't gone and bought the DVD for afterwards. I downloaded all of BSG (not having Sky One), and hit the "Pre Order" button on Amazon.co.uk the same evening.

I would far prefer it if this was made legal in some way, as you suggest. For example, I could buy from Amazon a combination of a download code and the DVD to be delivered later. If that mechanism existed for the content I want, I'd stop downloading TV shows in a heartbeat.

I know the downloading of such content is technically a crime and that authors have the moral right to control their creation, even if that means preventing it being distributed at all. (Incidentally, are the dumb TV execs morally the authors by virtue of being the copyright holders?) However, nowadays these TV shows are being withheld from sale for dumb reasons like scheduling, "synergy" and ratings wars. Screw them. Just let me buy the damn things. In the meantime, I'd prefer not to be called a pirate when I'm making a fair monetary offer for the content in question. It seems that as far as the studios are concerned a loyal viewer is either their bitch, or a criminal.

It would be far easier if "they" just released the damn show on DVD in good time. Then I wouldn't have to rob and plunder on the high seas just to have what I'm prepared to pay full price for. Arrr.

Re:A quarter a show?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I believe thats why being able to legally download a tv-show for a $1 an episode won't kill the dvd industry because a video clip on your computer, is a whole lot different to having a brand spanking new dvd in your hand to watch in your personal home theatre with 5.1 sound and amazing picture quality.

That's the entertainment equivalent of Bill Gates apocryphal, "640K should be more than enough for everybody."

Today anyone can download MPEG4(XviD) AVI's of current shows like Lost, 24, Joan of Arcadia, Smallville, Enterprise, Veronica Mars, Joey, Carnivale, etc that are higher resolution than DVD and with multi-channel audio - they have been sourced from the HDTV broadcasts and transcoded to MPEG4. Somet maintain the original HDTV resolution, some have been stepped down to something like 960x576p which is still better than DVD. These AVI files are also 2-4 times smaller than the equivalent MPEG2 files for standard DVD.

There are already multi-function stand-alone DVD players that can play DVDs of these high resolution AVI files and their number will only increase as the year progresses.

So, while for the majority of people today downloads don't directly compete with TV on DVD releases, it is only a matter of time, probably a rather short time, until they do.

Given that, let's take that $1 and skip the network middlemen. Don't give it to NBC/CBS/ABC/FOX/ETC with all their overhead. Give it directly to the production house. Follow along with me here:

The average half-hour sitcom costs $2M per episode to produce. The average hour-long drama costs about $4M per episode. These numbers are probably on the high side.

So an hour-long show would break even if it had an audience of 4 million who were willing to put up $1 each. If the paying audience was 5 million, that's a 25% profit. If the audience is willing to pay the money for each episode far enough ahead of time (say a "season pass" of $25 up front) that means the profit could be locked in before production even starts.

That lock-in is a HUGE risk reduction - most shows today are money losers until they make it into syndication, which requires about 4 seasons worth of shows. Yet more than 80% of shows are cancelled before their 4th season. Thus making a profit up front is BIG deal for the tv production industry.

So what should this hypothetical paying audience expect in return for this guaranteed profit they are handing the production company? How about, ownership of the results? A typical work-for-hire situation where the "employer" is the public at large. In other words, the production company gets paid with a nice return on their investment and ownership of the result passes immediately into the public domain upon payment.

Then anyone could share copies of the show with anyone else and not have to worry about "stealing from the artists" or being persecuted for commiting copyright infringement. The creators get paid and the audience gets the content, which they can burn to DVD themselves, or just delete off their hard disk once they are done with it knowing that somewhere out on the net there is an archive of the show if they need a copy again.

Since the end result is in the public domain, the local broadcasters could still broadcast it with their own commercials for the audience that isn't motivated enough to download it. Which means that local tv stations would have an interest in footing part of the bill themselves, kind of like syndication fees, the end result being that you don't need all 5 million people to still hit that $5M per episode mark - just 100 local stations across the world, each putting in $10k per episode would cut the paying audience number down to 4 million.

A lot of these numbers are pessimistic - for example, in its first year, Star Trek the Next Generation was carried in syndication on over 200 stations. In its first syndication run (i.e. second broadcast), Cheers was on 450 stations at an average of $3.6K per station per episod

Just a bit off topic, but we've already seen this

[Arkus]

Okay, we all are aware that this story is a dup of a previous one, well everyone except the individual that allowed this story to make it to the slashdot front page again, so I would like to take a moment to change the topic and voice my gripe about cable television and the utter stupidity of the entire situation in general.

Why is it that the public at large is expected to foot the bill for cable television for the luxury of watching programming that includes commercials? Television networks as well as your cable company make tons of money on the advertising that goes into television programs. The only reason the networks are able to charge as much as they do for the commercials is because people watch the programming.

It seems to me that if someone pays to receive television channels (many of which can be received for free over the air) via cable or satellite they should be able to receive programming that does not include commercials at all. For example if I can watch FOX using an antenna for free what value am I getting by paying to get that identical programming with commercials over a cable line? Compare it to viewing content on a website for free with ads or opting to buy a subscription to view the content without ads, much like you can on slashdot. Now channels like HBO that do not include commercials I can see paying for because they are offering me original commercial free content, something I can not get otherwise.

There is certainly a market for commercial free programming as can be shown by the popularity of subscription based DVRs such as Tivo. Sure people like watching their favorite programs at their convenience, but really a large part of it is being able to do so without the commercials.

To put it simply, I am of the opinion that basic cable should be provided to everyone without cost because the ad content has already generated more than enough revenue to cover the cost of distribution. The cable companies also generate ad review by selling local commercial spots into the programming. The cable companies should be able to pass on their costs to the networks rather than the general public because the networks could not possibly charge the advertisers as much as they do without the viewers the cable companies provide.

Offering at least basic cable for free would greatly increase the potential number of viewers which would in turn allow the networks and cable companies to charge more for their advertisement spots. Compare it to the way that print ads are sold where the cost is based on total distribution; higher distribution equals higher revenue per ad sold. Television viewership is down greatly and I would suspect that this trend will continue unless something new and innovative is given a chance.

Another thing I would really like to see happen would be for the cable companies to allow you to pick the programming you would like to receive. There are only 10 to 20 channels at most I would be interested in watching if I did have cable. Perhaps I could warm up a little to paying a nominal amount, say less than $20 per month including all taxes, if I were able to hand pick which channels I could receive and at least a fair number of those would have to be commercial free (such as HBO).

Re:Not Suprising

[Znork]

Isnt it odd how almost the entire top-list is sci-fi which lacks distribution in a lot of places, while there is pretty much no downloading of reality soaps?

Maybe the programming execs should get repeatedly fired for so completely and utterly failing to satisfy demand...

Hey, timothy!

[Tim C]

How about making comments down here with the rest of us, where we can reply to them properly and even moderate them?

For that matter, how about checking for dupes before posting a story?

Re:they've all been duped!

[SamSim]

On the plus side, instead of thinking, we can just copy/paste all the +5 comments from the other story and get huge amounts of karma.

For example, here's a comment by Xner: "Thre real reason for rampant TV piracy on this side of the pond is that shows are released a lot later around here, sometimes even YEARS. This does encourage people to take their viewing habits into their own hands." Insightful, eh? I'd mod me up if I were you.

Re:A Quarter A Download

[nametaken]

Well, lets think about it this way. If it costs $52 for me to buy a season box set of Stargate, and there are 22 episodes per set, lets call it $2.40 per episode. Then hack off a conservative amount for the old manufacturing and distribution costs and guesstimate that with the new lower costs they could sell them for $1 or $1.50 an episode and maintain their profit margin. Would we pay that?

If we're asking them to reduce their profit, that's probably not realistic.

Re:A Quarter A Download

[Mattintosh]

Would we pay that?

Yes. But only for a DVD. They must realize that a non-hard-copy of their show is worth much less than a burned, physical copy on relatively durable media. The price goes down even further for DRM'ed copies that reduce my ability to do what I want with the files.

Now for the other side of it: you have to realize that they won't offer this in any format you'd find usable. They'll use Windows Media because "everyone has it" or Real because "it's streaming so people have to pay-per-view". They'll inevitably screw something up to make it unusable, which makes it worth about $0.25 to those that will use it. Of course, they can't recoup their costs or match the amount of profit from the hard-copies when they do this, so it'll go away quickly.