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:Exactly

[Beolach]

The only thing that suffers in Mainstream music. But that market could only go down anyways. It was already fully inflated.

That's the big thing. Not only is it fully inflated, I would say it's over-inflated, and due to pop. Everyone has there own opinions, and I'm sure a lot of people actually do like "mainstream" music, but IMO "mainstream" music owes its popularity more to the record labels strangleholds on distribution than to consumers honest opinions on the quality of the music.

The thing is, I think the RIAA is scared way more than they should be of P2P. They were just as scared of radio, and audio cassette tapes. Neither one killed their market. I don't think P2P will either, in the long run. Affect it, yes, but record labels will probably still be signing contracts with musicians 50, 100 years from now. Probably even longer.