P2P and TV

Khuffie writes "According to Wired, Warner Bros. Entertainment recently passed on a pilot of a show called Global Frequency. However, due to a leak on bit-torrent the pilot episode has reached thousands of viewers who are clamouring for more, and has given the show a new lease on life. What's more interesting is what the show creator learned. From the article: "It changes the way I'll do my next project," said Rogers. If he owned the full rights, he said, "I would put my pilot out on the internet in a heartbeat. Want five more? Come buy the boxed set." Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore."

Comments

Then how is the production funded?

[daveschroeder]

You're watching no ads. I'm not sure you realize how much money advertising brings to the table here.

Want five more? Come buy the boxed set.

You mean pay in advance for the boxed set that doesn't exist yet? Yeah, the kind of people hell-bent on pirating shows will do that. Even the ones who claim they'd "pay" for good content (How much? Ten or twenty dollars? Beyond which they'll just go back to BitTorrent again?). And no one's going to finance a project like this, since you've got no proven paying viewership.

Look, guys: we all realize that P2P has legitimate applications. But these desperate attempts to somehow "prove" that P2P is somehow the most desirable distribution mechanism are getting tiresome. And even in this case, Warner Brothers owns this content (though I'm not even going to touch on the legality of copyright infringement, since so many here already either believe copyright is inherently wrong, or that copyright is okay when its used by projects they approve of, but "wrong" when a corporation uses it).

Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore.

Well bully for you.

What do you watch, then? Shows whose production counts on the advertising revenue associated with the show? No, you don't have to watch the advertising, and yes, you can go to the bathroom during the commercials. But the advertisers are paying to be in front of X number of peoples' eyes. And if that goes away, how does your well-produced show get, well, produced?

I'm not saying there are NO alternatives; just that it's more than a little hypocritical to completely discount where the money came from to pay for these shows you're downloading.

Now, if someone who creates and owns the content wants to distribute on P2P and try to drum up interest that way, go for it. But I highly doubt the kind of entitlement crowd that downloads everything for free is going to be willing to pay to support ongoing production of such an operation. Some money? Aboslutely, sure. The kind of money that is ANYWHERE NEAR the kind needed to support the ongoing production of such an operation? Absolutely not.

Re:Then how is the production funded?

[drsquare]

OK, I'll try to analyse this. A million is a LOT. I mean, a really huge amount. That's more people than watch most films in the cinemas. For something like Star Trek, that's often more than the people who watch it on TV. Not many DVDs sell a million.

That 'ten bucks' isn't your revenue. Out of that, you have the cost of pressing, the distribution, and the shop that sells it will take its cut. Out of that $10, how much is profit for the producers? (I mean, profit on the DVD, not on the production overall). That ten includes the tax. In the UK that's 17.5, so only $8.25 per DVD.

Where do you get your numbers for costs from? I've heard from admittedly a not very reliable source (Slashdot, although it's as reliable as your post which is another Slashdot post), that each episode of Star Trek Enterprise cost $6,000,000 to produce. That's $30,000,000 for your five-show DVD. If you made $6 from each DVD sold to a million people you'd break even. So out of your $8.25 per DVD, you need $6 of that going to the studio. In other words, $1.75 in TOTAL for the physical manufacturing of the DVD, the transport, and the cut for the shop. Assuming the DVD shops want to go bust, and they take a tiny tiny cut, you JUST might break even.

Part of the reason it is expensive now is that you are paying for a HUGE overhead of hollywood, distributers, and local outlets. All of that expense goes away.

Making TV shows ALWAYS requires overhead. How do you distribute your DVDs? Hollywood are the producers. I'm assuming someone will be producing these new shows, or will they magically appear from thin air? Local outlets will still be needed, unless you only sell your DVDs on the Internet. I'm assuming Amazon wants a cut. I'm also assuming there is a lot of money to be made selling DVDs in 'brick and mortar' stores, as not many people tend to release DVDs solely over the Internet unless they're obscure. By limiting yourself to Internet distribution you're cutting into your success.

Yeah you could use bittorrent, but then a lot of these people who use bittorrent think that 'information wants to be free', and that copyright law is evil and greedy, and will have no qualms about not paying you a penny, downloading all your stuff, stripping out the adverts and sharing it with all their friends (all 50,000 of their Internet 'friends'). Bang, there goes your business model.

The nut for this is 500,000 viewers at 20 bucks a piece. If we get it- we will produce 5 episodes on DVD for those folks.

20 bucks for 5 episodes is a bit high (4 each). I got Family Guy for 50, with 50 episodes (I'm in the UK but I'll ignore currencies because prices in the UK are like in the US but with the symbols changed around). I got Red Dwarf for about a tenner each as well, over double the value for money, and they're classics which I've seen and KNOW are good, whereas yours would be untested waters.

I'm much more likely to spend money on DVDs for something I know I like rather than something for which I've only seen a pilot.

The cost of making things like this is dropping like a stone. You don't need 150 million dollars to do it if you don't go through hollywood.

Hollywood are greedy and penny-pinching, and yet they still have astronomical costs. Producers who are less greedy, and more willing to throw money around will end up spending MORE to make the same thing. And if they're less greedy, and have less business-sense, they're more likely to go bust, and scupper any future episodes.

The costs aren't dropping. All those costs are actually spent on things. If you want to see what's it's like when you don't spend money, go and watch the Blair Witch Project or Pi. Would you want to watch that every week? I mean, once the novelty wore off?

I apologise for the rambling and the poor spelling and grammer, I've had a few tins and it hits me like a train.

What a bunch of Greedy Bastards

[dankasfuk]

This 'leak' has produced a fanbase before this show has any possibility of airing, in effect creating a market for it (not to mention its being posterd on /.) This has the potential to generate WB a small fortune on a project they would have otherwise scrapped; and all they ccan do is complain about how it was a theft of intelectual property. If I remember correctly, once you throw something out, its fair game ;)

It makes you wonder...

[EvilStein]

How many really cool TV show pilots are sitting on a shelf collecting dust, never to be seen by the public?

Why? Corporate interests? Copyrights? It's sad how copyright law lets something be shoved under the carpet like that.

I'd like to see media companies do something cool: if the product is no longer generating revenue, turn it loose on the web. Maybe that's just a dream, because they're hoping TV Land will pay royalties to air old TV shows, so since there's a *potential* revenue stream, the shows sit on the shelf.

Hey, here's another idea. Put the pilots on the web, and have a contest to see which one folks like best. *gasp* Imagine that! Having the *viewing public* help you pick out what shows to work on next! Oh, the humanity!

The Long Tail

[Andrew Cady]

I hope we've all read The Long Tail by now.

This is the end of advertising-sponsored media -- not Tivo or illegal torrent downloading. Advertising-based media, which always must seek the largest audience possible for every program, simply cannot compete once broadcast distribution is no longer a scarce commodity. The larger the target audience, the lower the quality.

The full implications of the long tail are astounding, once you really work them out. Imagine the end of huge movie stars, of "hits", of fame in entirety -- it will simply not be profitable -- imagine what that would mean, in any medium! How will we decide what to watch, listen to, or read when there is nobody who can make money deciding for us?

Re:And Paramount's response?

[m50d]

Did you even read the post you replied to? The only legal basis for *copyright* is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. So if people taking your Awesome-o-matic would in the long run promote science and the useful arts more than letting you keep and sell it, that's what should be done. If you don't like it you can move somewhere else, because that's the *constitution*.

Re:The future of Podcasting here?

[Ironsides]

How about we take a cue from the home theatre market? Direct to Video productions? Screw the movie theatres and the major networks, just release the episodes directly to DVD and make money that way.

Broadcast TV Cares Not For Quality

[aredubya74]

So long as there are broadcast television networks and channels that don't make a dime off cable subscription fees, the subject is accurate. Execs don't particularly care about cool, fun or quality. They care that the programs they run bring eyeballs to the screen that will allow them to maintain (and raise) advertising rates. It's how they make virtually all of their revenue.

Now, what's changed in recent years is the number of cable networks and channels getting in on the act. Ad revenue matters to them too, but they throw on much riskier programming that can be resold through retail channels. Their smaller quantities of free eyeballs ("expanded basic" cable or satellite subscribers, not over-the-air or nearly-free basic cable) demands that they provide niche value to the channel lineups, and demands they produce programming that can be sold. Comedy Central is a perfect example of this - South Park, Chappelle's Show and Reno 911 would not have gotten a chance elsewhere. On CC, they made money for the channel through ad revenue, and sold tons of DVDs.

The production houses are the wildcard in all this (Warner Bros, Paramount, NewsCorp). They're now directly affiliated with broadcast media conglomerates themselves, but for years, they sold to ABC, NBC and CBS. Now they can pitch to those 3, along with their "vanity" broadcast network, as well as to their vanity cable station (FX, TNT, USA and the like). With so many broadcast outlets, the big dollars don't come with being picked up. They come from syndication and retail resale. As such, those production house (like the one from this article) owe it to themselves to get quality shows in front of viewers, no matter what it takes to get it there.

Re:And...?

[AKAImBatman]

It was his reaction to the whole thing. Instead of pondering what this sudden influx of a fanbase for a non-existent show means, he jumps straight to the "cover it up through force" method.

In other words, I'm not really talking about copyrights. Then again, neither is Mr. Hoffman. ;-)

Back Channel Marketing maybe?

[farrellj]

So, someone in the TV industry clues in to what Microsoft and a few others have know for a long time...Windows and other programs like Word, Autocad, etc are as popular as they are now not by quality, but by the fact that they are freely copied and thus everyone, even poor people learn them, and if they ever are in a situation where they can buy it, they do. Piracy thus creates a vast pre-made audience for a product, be it software, music, books or now TV shows. For all we really know, this release of the show could actually be a test of back-channel marketing. To sell a show, you need to know how popular it is, and only then can you sell commercials for it.

In today's 500+ channel universe, getting "eyeballs" can be hard for a new show on TV...but on the Internet, it's a good chance if you get even a small part of one percent, you will get more viewers than the average new show on network TV. As various groups track P2P transfers, you can get a more accurage accounting of viewership than you can with a random sampling of TV viewers such as Neilson does.

All in all, P2P distribution seems to be a more economical way to judge the possible success of a new show.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:And Paramount's response?

[Fallingcow]

Way to totally misunderstand the GP.

He's just saying that if the point of copyright is to encourage more content to be created and released (which it is), then we should consider the copyright system a bit broken if it causes large amounts of good stuff to get suppressed. It's possible that tweaking the copyright system would result in more content getting created and released, which would make it better. GP said nothing about giving stuff away for free.

The choice of what to do with it is in the hands of the creator, not what the masses want.

The construct of "intellectual property" is created by the masses for their own benefit. If it happens to benefit creators, that's great. If the creators get in the way of benefit for the masses, fuck 'em. Copyright is about benefitting society; that the best method of instituting it happens to help out the creators in most cases is incidental. The system can help creators a bunch, that's fine, but the second that interferes with the benefits for the masses it needs to change, because that's not why the masses invented copyright. The creator can choose not to release anything at all; however, if they do release and then seek copyright protection, society better damn well better be getting something out of it for granting them such protection.

We're talking about optimization here. Best possible good for the masses. Odds are the solution gives the creators of content a pretty damn good deal, too, but that's just a happy coincidence.

Changing the producer, change the customer

[jfengel]

This is true, but as with any product, you have to make it, and that costs money. Making TV shows to attract the products to watch the commercials is their capital expense.

Cyncially, it's not entirely unlike a hunter putting out a salt lick. Well, TV viewers don't get shot. They just get shown commercials. I've known people who would say that the deer are getting off easy.

The upshot (as it were) is that the networks are the middle man, and P2P may represent a way of cutting out the middle man, for TV as it is gradually becoming for music.

As with music, there are still questions to be answered. Middle men exist for a reason: they make transactions easier. TV networks broker the transaction between the artists (TV show actors/directors/writers) and the viewer, extracting their inch of green in the form of commercials. Even if the TV producers could make their shows, getting it advertised and paid for are still unanswered questions. Pay per download, perhaps, with P2P used as "viral marketing"?

There's also, as with music, the question of up-front expense. TV pilots are wildly expensive. Worse, they make significant capital expenses, like sets and effects, which cost a lot but can be re-used if the show is picked up. Think about the Firefly pilot, for example: they had to build a huge set for Serenity. All that is up front expenses, which are spent by networks. There are economic solutions to that problem, but we'll have to see which ones work and which don't.

So having us as the product rather than the customer can change, but it's going to be difficult. It means changing the nature of the seller from the network, who makes its profit by selling your eyeballs, to somebody else who makes a profit elsewhere.

Perhaps a well-funded person who makes 10 TV shows, has one succeed on a pay-per-download basis, and makes enough to do 10 more. Or perhaps there are 100 low-budget movie producers, like Blair Witch, of whom 99 will lose their $20k investment and the others will get enough buzz from somewhere to sell copies online.

Or wackier, perhaps a subscription basis, where they sell shares of a project in progress, the price rising as it gets closer to completion, and the profits shared among the shareholders. I seem to recall a movie being made like that, but I don't recall what happened to it. I'm afraid that speaks badly for the idea.

Or perhaps even an "open source" project, but although writers and actors may do it for love and to share, the guys who sell lumber and costumes usually don't think of their work as open-sourceable.

Either way, if you don't want to be the product, you're going to find a way to be the customer. Customers pay for things.

Re:And...?

[MatD]

So if I produce a movie, and I can't get it published, another movie company can make a copy of it and distribute it, then keep all the profits? Also, what about a studio employee that takes a copy and sells it to a competing studio before it's released?

Re:Heh

[stinerman]

Yes, just like I'm "stealing" /. because I use AdBlock.

I'll repeat the copyleft infringement v. copyright infringment argument again.

Infringment of the GPL/BSD licenses is a worse offense because you are taking something open and making it closed, whereas straight copyright infringment is taking something closed and making it open.

That's just ridiculous

[sczimme]

This should be true in general. Any work that an "owner" is not interested in exploiting for commercial gain should be strictly PD. None of this nonsense about locking up masterpieces in a vault to rot away.

Scenario:

1) I create a really neat widget.
2) I am not interested in releasing the widget.
3) I am not interested in financial gain.

And somehow you come to the logical (??) conclusion that I should release the widget into the public domain, because obviously if I don't want to profit from it then you should should be able to mandate such release.

That is a ridiculous and indefensible position. As an added bonus, some nitwits have chosen to mod you up.

Here is some news: Some things are not free. Some things are not your property. If you did not create $ITEM, you have no rights whatsoever to $ITEM until the creator/owner agrees to assign such rights. You really should understand this.

I'll say it again,...

[slashzero]

If the TV world would wise up and start distributing their shows with the ads via bittorrent the world would be a better place. Embrace new technology don't fear it. It's exactly what iTunes is doing. They made it easier to buy the music than to steal it. I was "podcasting" tvshows off of btefnet.org when it was up and I wouldn't of minded if the ads were in there. I'm accustommed to watching ads on TV why not downloaded TV shows?

Michelle Forbes

[snuf23]

"Miranda Zero, played by actress Michelle Forbes. (Forbes is fast building a tech-geek pedigree: She's also the voice of Dr. Judith Mossman in the video game Half Life 2)."

I guess having appeared as Ensign Ro in multiple Star Trek the Next Generation episodes isn't worth mention as far her geek-pedigree goes?

Re:The irony... MINOR SPOILERS

[TrentC]

I've watched the pilot. Clever, but the first half _sucks_. Uses pretty much every cliche in the book.

Clichés are clichés for a reason. They work because they meet the viewers' expectations.

I assume you're talking about the setup for the show, where we get the "what is the Global Frequency" talk, the introduction of the "new guy" into the world of the series, etc.

I'm curious how you would handle the following:

1. Introducing your principal cast of characters
2. Introducing the viewer to the premise of the show, e.g. the Global Frequency is a borderline-outlaw network of specialists and operatives that tackle Things Man Was Not Meant To Know
3. Establishing the plot of the story for the pilot
4. Establishing the elements that viewers can expect from the show: a rotating cast of characters, weird science, "black ops" action, and the Global Frequency effect

without ending up with either the pilot we got or having something like this at the beginning of the show?

By the way, this wasn't the final pilot; the GF ringtone was only a placeholder, and the music wasn't finished either. It was a version that was shopped around to networks, which would have been finished had they been picked up. John Rogers, the producer, said he would've reshot elements of the pilot they been picked up, particulaly the opening scene in the alley.

Jay (=