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Was the New Dr. Who Leaked on Purpose?
Static-MT writes "The pilot episode of the BBC's highly anticipated new Doctor Who series may have been intentionally leaked onto file-sharing networks to generate buzz, a source who instructed the network on viral advertising told Wired News."
Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend. Between this "leak" and the Battlestar Galactica episode available on the Sci-Fi website for free, maybe television stations just get the "net" better than the RIAA and MPAA.
The pilot episode would garner the most ratings in the overnight to judge a success? (How many series "die" after the first episode from a poor showing). So if you leak the pilot, theoretically it doesn't get watched as much so you blow the "hook" to keep viewers coming back to the time slot next week.
The right thing would be to work out some way of charging you guys in the US for it, or making a timely release on DVD. Given that those of us in the UK have paid for the production via our TV Licence.
Part of the reason the BBC is still investigating ways of broadcasting everything online is that they need to figure out a way to limit access to those who've actually put something back into the BBC.
The BBC doesn't have domestic advertising, so they and I could care less about the "leak" because they've NOT LOST A PENNY because of it. On the other hand, they've got a lot of publicity and perhaps boosted the international market for the program.
The Blair Witch Project was famously promoted by creating bogus info sites, detailing the "legend" of the Blair Witch.
In an interesting stroke of genius a Japanese film director went about the process the other way around. He wanted to make a film about teenagers, and had a very rough idea for a story involving a group of teenagers and their pop idol whose music they all listen to and obsess over. So he set up a fan site for a purely fictional artist, including discussion boards which were suitably seeded. The resulting discussions were then used to shape the final film, and a lot of the dialog from the discussion boards actually appears in the film (the teenagers in the film, of course, meet and interact on internet fan sites).
The resulting film, if you ever get the chance, is well worth seeing. It's called "All About Lily Chou Chou", and is a very perceptive study of youth not only in Japan, but the world over. Note, also, that a track from the Kill Bill Vol. 1 soundtrack is credited to the entirely fictional artist "Lily Chou Chou" who was created solely for the film (the track is from the soundtrack to "All About Lily Chou Chou").
Jedidiah.
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