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MTV Takes on P2P by Making South Park Free
thefickler writes "MTV Networks, the biggest division of Viacom Inc., has announced plans to make every South Park episode available online for free as part of a plan to make the show available to a larger audience." This is apparently largely because of the success of a similar project where they put every episode of The Daily Show on-line a few months back. This action didn't hurt ratings, and it may have actually helped them.
No, don't be silly. Not the people watching TV.
I was talking about the various networks around the globe that license Southpark, often first of all having to dub it. That this takes time is a given (it's gotten better in the past years, but it's still about a season difference, give or take).
When I can watch a show online, why bother waiting for our networks to dub it? Yes, I "have to" watch it in English, but then again, usually that's the better version anyway. Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
So, any response from the networks? I mean, I don't know about the Daily Show (never heard of it, actually, and possibly not as much an export as SP is), but a show like Southpark which is being licensed widely might cause some negative reaction from the networks licensing it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Isn't it great? My girlfriend started downloading documentaries to make up for the lack, and we've learned about a whole host of different things. It's amazing how little you miss the crap they churn out.
Did you hear the one about the crack dealer who went on strike? Where all his clients cleaned themselves up and the market disappeared?
No, me neither. Guess crack dealers are smarter than the Writers Guild.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
So if Viamcom is going to put shows on the Internet then it would make sense for them to recommend BitTorrent as a distribution method, even though Viacom is also an ISP, the total bandwidth is the same whether downloaded directly from a Viacom site or using a torrent. But using a torrent is the least expensive and most efficient method for the distributor.
OK, so assuming Viacom, as a content producer and an ISP, prefers BitTorrent, where does that put Comcast? I wonder if this will also encourage competition?