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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."
Once again proving that "illegal" file sharing only helps good media and hurts bad media.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Well if its legal, meaning, the owners of the video purposely used this as advertisting, then who cares? Its a good idea if you ask me. Should be 'Distributed' via file sharing networks, not leaked :)
Sigs are for Terrorists.
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.
I dont know if the leaking was intentional or not, but if the show is any good it will probably help the ratings. Battlestar Galactica came out first in the UK, and probably became the single most Bittorrented tv show before it aired in the US, to excelent ratings. The creator of BSG asked fans *not* to download the show, because he feared people who downloaded it wouldnt bother to watch it on TV. What really happened is, the show is excelent, and the buzz generated by all the early viewing probably helped the ratings a lot. In Brazil BSG started airing this month, and a lot of people who wouldnt otherwise even know it existed are tuning in to a semi-obscure cable channel because of early viewing.
Of course, if a show is crap P2P will probably hurt the ratings.
I can't think of any drama or comedy shows that had a very highly rated 1st episode, then a huge drop-off in the second.
Usually a large drop-off in ratings is caused by one of the following:
1. Cast changes (The Practice)
2. Genre Fatigue (Enterprise)
3. Timeslot follies (Futurama, Family Guy)
4. Jumping the Shark (Malcolm in the Middle, Will and Grace)
5. The thing everyone waited for happened (Cheers, Moonlighting, soon will happen to Lost and Desperate Hosuewives)
I would think that if the BBC wanted high ratings, the thing to do would be to get as many people as possible to see the 1st episode, then follow up with 2nd and 3rd episodes of extremely high quality. That seemed to work for Battlestar Galactica.
Having more and more people tune in each week is very desireable to TV programming people, much more so than a huge number of viewers initially due to curiosity, then a big fall-off because the show stinks and can't hold an audience.
1) This could be a very bad trend, if the MPAA and anti-piracy groups get their way. If the marketer doesn't do their due diligence and check with their law groups, then this "buzz" and viral marketing could get those who downloaded said video prosecuted for downloading something that was intentionally uploaded for marketing purposes. Downloading things such as fc3.x86.iso is safe because it's already known content. If i downloaded desperatehousewives.s1e21.avi, how would I know if this was a marketing release or not?
2) maybe pirate groups should create another meta tag for videos = screeners, telecines, marketing videos.
3) If it really was distributed on purpose, then there should have been a disclaimer, or some sort of "tag" at the end, a title page indicating that the full series would come up soon, with showtimes and the like. Otherwise, what's the point of the first episodes excepting to bring the viewers up to a point where they know the storyline will eventually be regardless?
4) The whole "quality of video" analysis doesn't sell me on the purposeful leak theory.
In 2003/2004 the license fee was about $20 a month.
Hmm, the page I got that from had an interesting breakdown of how they spent it:
* BBC One £3.37
* BBC Two £1.45
* Digital television channels £0.98
* Transmission and collection costs £0.98
* BBC Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 and Five Live £0.99
* Digital radio stations £0.08
* Nations & English Regions television £0.90
* Local radio £0.61
* bbc.co.uk £0.31
Total £9.67
For those not familiar with their work:
BBC one is the mainstream TV channel. This is where Dr. Who would be found. One is a difficult channel for the BBC since they have to work out how much it should compete with commercial TV.
BBC two is for less popular TV stuff. Often programs start on two, gain a following, and transfer to one.
Digital TV - they repeat one and two, and add three (more entertainment), four (more factual), two kids channels, a 24 hour news channel, and a channel showing what parliament is doing. the key on is three, which basically the Govt. forces them to do in order to encourage people to go digital (e.g. they show new series here first) so that it will be easy to turn off the analogue one day.
The national radio stations: one is new popular music; two is non-new popular music, comedy, other music genres; three is classical; four is speech; five is sport and news.
Digital radio is as digital TV; they rebroadcast and add some more channels. Seven is absolutely brilliant as they play their back catalogue of incredible radio stuff.
Regional TV is mostly news, although some of the larger regions make their own stuff. Northern Ireland and Wales especially.
Local Radio is mostly awful except for London and the odd show.
All the radio can be heard on their web page, with most shows available for a week after their original transmission. This alone nearly justifies the license fee for me!
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?