How Battlestar Galactica Killed TV

Don Melanson writes "Following up on the MPAA going after torrent sites, you may be interested in Mindjack's latest feature - Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV by Mark Pesce. It includes a post-script written in reponse to the recent Torrent site shutdowns." From the article: "While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for 'word-of-mouth' to spread about Battlestar Galactica."

Comments

Re:I remember it somewhat different....

[danbeck]

You sir, are either trolling, or a fool.

Re:It's true...

[suitepotato]

Sci-Fi just got so much *right* with BG. The free downloads on their site, the official commentary podcast, and the show itself is just outstanding. I'm waiting eagerly for next season.

Too bad this does not include the program itself which in a word sucks. In a few more words, it has more pregnant pauses, story threads to nowhere, farked up camera work, character profile dyslexia, and obsession with inane irrellevance than anything ever before done in sci-fi. Somehow, it has sailed under the cynicism radar and become geek chic and now is spreading on BitTorrent. So does porn. Does that mean Torrent is somehow changing the world of porn?

Time to get a reality check people. When news coverage of major events, educational programming, and well done entertainment get massively spread by P2P, then we can say the landscape of (television/movies/whatever) is being changed. Torrent=geek chic. BSG=geek chic. BSG over Torrent=orgasmic geek chic. That's a no-brainer, and sadly so too is the quality of the work done on BSG.

Disclaimer: writer has DVR'd BSG since the beginning and has consistantly been more amused by the original series which was at least laughably bad in a campy way. BSG of today is seriously bad and doesn't even realize it. If this keeps up, we're headed for the Murphy Brown level of taking oneself way too seriously. Clones? Religious fanaticism? Political p*ssing contests? Gender/racial blenders in casting and character rewriting? Do these writers ever create anything remotely original or do they draw solely from the headlines and current politics for everything? How many current day cliches do they need to stick into this program before people wake up and hear the phrase "ripped from today's headlines" go through their heads?

This is a very sad sign of the times, indeed, when this is the stuff that passes for television worth sharing online.