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TV Delays Driving AU Viewers To Piracy
Astat1ne writes in with a story in The Register about the delays Australian TV viewers are experiencing getting overseas-produced series and how this is driving many of them to download the shows via BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer networks. The problem is compounded by the fact that Australian viewers are unable to download legal copies of the episodes from the US iTunes website. Quoting: "According to a survey based on a sample of 119 current or recent free-to-air TV series, Australian viewers are waiting an average of almost 17 months for the first-run series first seen overseas. Over the past two years, average Australian broadcast delays for free-to-air television viewers have more than doubled from 7.9 to 16.7 months."
The MAJOR point should also be that australia has more ads per show than ANY country on the planet.. HEROES was almost 2 hours long for the first ep when it aired here (seriously 1min view for 1 min ad) We are, on average, at 20 minutes of ads per hour. (its sweden or norway next on the list at 17min) Also for all of us SCIFI watches - BSG, Stargate, Trek, DrWho etc, we want to watch it as it is released as well read the forums etc. Also in the 90's - did you know that they SPED UP the shows so that a 44minute show ran for 43minutes? Yeap - another minute of ads there. (channel 9 was the main user of this)And that was when they didn't choose to edit Star Trek:Next Gen to fit more ads in..(yeap that's right they cut whole scenes out!) Another example was with the Muscial Buffy Episode - they sped it up slightly (shown on channel 7) so it was a bit out of key - My Wife was soooo pissed, but loved me for my DVD copy i had got earlier (was first getting tapes sent from the states then dvds - love my mates) and all this quickly from memory while at work........