Movie Piracy Cost Australian Network 'Hundreds of Millions of Dollars' (theaustralian.com.au)

Film television piracy and illegal downloads are partly to blame for Australian broadcaster Ten Network's woes, according to Village Roadshow co-chief executive Graham Burke. From a report: He said piracy had cost Ten "hundreds of millions of dollars" in potential advertising revenue because of lower ratings resulting from pirated versions of films supplied by 21st Century Fox under an onerous output deal with the Hollywood studio. He said copies of Fox's Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant and The Peanuts Movie were stolen last year and shared illegally via a piracy website. "Piracy is a much bigger channel and an illicit economy than the three main commercial networks combined. It is ripping off viewers from legitimate, taxpaying enterprises," Mr Burke said. "The product that Ten is buying from 21st Century Fox and is now arriving have been pirated out of sight."

Comments

And film blocking causes MORE damage

[gurps_npc]

Australia's refusal to let their citizens buy/watch foreign films has cost them billions of dollars.

Hey, you gotta point out both sides of the problem.

Re:And film blocking causes MORE damage

[mjwx]

Australia's refusal to let their citizens buy/watch foreign films has cost them billions of dollars.

Hey, you gotta point out both sides of the problem.

Ex-Australian here. The problem is twofold.

1. American companies treat Australia like the recycling bin, old crap goes in and not a second thought is given. We regularly get things months if not years after other countries and are then expected to pay a premium for it. We got sick of it and then figured out ways to get around it such as grey importing and piracy. Aussies are actually a rather smart bunch (well some of us). So by the time these movies are shown on TV, everyone's already seen them.

2. Chanel 10 (CH10) is stuck in the 80's way of thinking before we had the internet with all the pirate bays, netflixes and VPN's. They signed a deal thinking the good times would never end.

The problem is, CH10's money spinners are crappy reality TV shows that have so much fake, overhyped drama that the E! network is openly jealous. People are moving on from these as well because its more of the same crap. Their other money spinner was The Simpsons, which is now on pay TV.

Also it should be noted that the article appears in The Australian, which is ironically the most unAustralian publication you can find. The Australian is owned by Newscorp who's been waging their own war against piracy because Foxtel (cable TV) has been steadily losing customers as well. So I wouldn't just take what you read in The Australian with a grain of salt, but a shot of tequila and slice of lime as well.

What is this about?

[chipschap]

TFA is paywalled but the summary is incoherent. Pirating is costing them advertising dollars? They have an "onerous" deal with with the Hollywood studio?

I tend not to sympathize much with big media, but could we please have a summary that at least is reasonably easy to follow and describes what's going on in coherent terms?

(Yes I know, this is up to the Slashdot "editors"...)

Re:What is this about?

[H3lldr0p]

I'm curious about the "stolen" part of his statement.

Is the article about actual piracy? Were physical copies were taken in transit to be sold at street markets? Because that's seems like a legit worry. But then it turns around and says put on the internet. Which isn't how that works at all. You don't need to actually steal anything to make a copy like that.

Maybe he's just a confused, ignorant twat who can't figure out how the world works these days.

Re:What is this about?

[Calydor]

So much this.

It's as if media companies don't understand that with the internet, we have friends all over the world and see news from all over the world.

Let's take Game of Thrones as an example. If you could only watch Season 4 today, how much of it would you know just from what your friends and news sites have talked about? Can YOU talk to your friends in other countries about it, considering they're currently waiting for Season 7 to be released?

We have developed a network that allows essentially instantaneous planetwide communication - and somehow think that delaying entertainment for months and years is a GOOD idea that will not be circumvented by any means available.

Including illegal ones.

Re:What is this about?

[mrbester]

No, he's grizzling that the number of dollars he pulled out of his arse that he expected to get from advertising wasn't realised. Therefore it must be the fault of piracy and not some dodgy calculation on a fag packet that was taken as prophecy.

Re:What is this about?

[ezdiy]

But theater releases and TV broadcast? What's the point? Most companies from what I've seen want all the dollars right this second and to hell with the future. So why is this the one instance where they decide that absurdly long delays are useful? I just don't get it.

Netflix and anime licensors can afford to simulcast because they're for the mostly a hegemony, not immense, fragmented market.

Not so with generic TV, two things happen there:

• 1. You have hundreds of thousands businesses who air whatever they could afford for that given year and they can budget. And they simply couldn't afford the series once it got big, they didn't have syndication agreement when it was pre-boom and cheap etc.

• 2. Retardation on part of seller comparable to DVD regions. Suppose 1. didn't happen, the rights owner is outright *dick* who thought it would hurt their DVD sales in that area and whatnot.

Re:What is this about?

[tlhIngan]

Even without the internet, I see little purpose to delaying distribution. Maybe with DVDs because of varying regional prices and not wanting say, American buyers to purchase their DVDs from South Africa for $2 rather than the $25 they charge at home (though customs officials have been watching for that kind of thing for years now anyway.. for better or worse.)

But theater releases and TV broadcast? What's the point? Most companies from what I've seen want all the dollars right this second and to hell with the future. So why is this the one instance where they decide that absurdly long delays are useful? I just don't get it.

True. And in fact, movies and TV shows ARE distributed digitally these days (the reason movies in the past were delayed was because you only had so much film stock going around, and typically the film stock gets moved around).

The big problem is, and always will be, money. The only reason we have delays is because of distribution rights, and companies pay a LOT of money for exclusivity. A company like Netflix can easily send a movie or TV show worldwide on release, but unless Netflix matches every region dollar for dollar, the studios will take the higher paying distributors over the lower paying Netflix any day. And if those distributors lose exclusivity, they won't pay quite so much money for it - exclusivity means a lot more money than without, obviously

The only real way to break it is to either devalue the exclusivity deals tremendously, or step up to the plate and beat the distributors

Re:What is this about?

[dwywit]

This isn't cable - it's one of the three major broadcast TV networks in Oz.

We have similar problems with cable/satellite providers - "package" subscriptions vs. a la carte, and while Netflix provides a good service reasonably priced, it has nowhere near the content of Netflix in the USofA.

Ten, Seven, and Nine have all been struggling for years. Nine made a strategic deal with Microsoft (NineMSN) which hasn't really paid off, Seven made a strategic deal with Yahoo (Y7), which, well, you see where we're headed.

Ten had a couple of 'big' shows, but they were reality shows - Big Brother, and Master Chef, a cooking show. There's only so much of that crap that anyone can take, even avid fans - it gets stale very quickly. The rest of the content is 99% crap. The execs at all of those networks have shown that they just can't break out of the the broadcast model - "We have the content, you'll watch it when we decide and you'll watch as much advertising as we can pile on, damn the awkward breaks in a show's tension, and we don't want you recording it to watch later, because then you can skip the ads, and it wrecks the ratings surveys, on which we base our advertising rates."

Broadcast networks should have seen the invitable when VCRs became popular, but no, they had to cling to obsolete business models.

Ten will be sold to some overseas investment corporation, and might survive, but unless it changes its thinking substantially, it'll be gone inside a decade. So will the others.

Pretty hard to prove its pirates

[mr.dreadful]

Given how much Hollywood is struggling with ticket sales, why would stations rebroadcasting 2nd or 3rd run movies expect to not be affected?

What a sense of entitlement!

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

That Graham Burke signed a "onerous" deal with Hollywood studios. But does not blame the bad deal they signed, but expect Australians to bail them out by keeping their ad revenue coming. Just suck it up buddy, when the deal comes up for renewal, make realistic projections and offer what these movies are worth.

Buyer beware

[WolfgangVL]

"Piracy is a much bigger channel and an illicit economy than the three main commercial networks combined."

And your dumbass got in bed with those commercial networks anyway. How much more are they charging you than the other countries? How much longer must you wait for content? How much are they holding back? Did they offer you a higher price to get it sooner? Are they force-feeding you their commercials as part of the deal?

Pirates refused the bullshit terms. You did not. Now cry.

Chump.

Re:Buyer beware

[JaredOfEuropa]

Pirates refused the bullshit terms.

And so should governments, who are there for the people rather than the studios. Up until recently our government did exactly that. The rule was: if you are not offering your content here (in a more or less timely manner, and under reasonable terms), then people are free to pirate it; the government would not prosecute downloaders. Seems like a great way to exert some pressure on the studios on behalf of the populace.

Of course piracy.

[neilo_1701D]

Of course it's piracy that has brought Network 10 to it's knees.

The absolute shit they show has nothing to deal with it, of course.

It wasn't so long ago that Network 10 was actually a very profitable station that never did well in the ratings. Then the powers-that-be decided ratings were more important, shoved their profitable shows to 11 and proceeded to watch their profits implode. But let's blame the consumer for piracy rather than facing the uncomfortable reality that they blew it.

Who actually gets that money?

[rsilvergun]

Just about every gov't around the world has been cutting taxes on top earners for 30 years now. Meanwhile cutting services under the banner of "Austerity".

Movie industries are small, high profit operations. They employ relatively few people in middle class jobs. So tell me Australia (or US, or Japan, or Germany, or every other movie industry on earth bitching about piracy), if you're not gonna pay into civilization why should I care?

And on a related note

[Weaselmancer]

I just got sued by Kroger's. Every time I drove by and didn't purchase something they considered it a lost sale.

Our vassals ...

[PPH]

.. aren't shopping at the company store.

The idea that any entity (corporate or otherwise) own a market is ludicrous. Markets are made up of people and, although I don't know the particulars of Australian law, President Lincoln freed all of ours.

Ten Network can't blame pirates

[jonfr]

This former network CEO (I'm not sure about his position in this former company) is wrong. The reason for this is just streaming, just Netflix or something else. Torrent alone is not a factor in this at all. For instance TCM Nordic closed down on 1st June due to drop in viewing and this is not first time that Turner Network close down television stations. They have closed down Silver and Showtime (I think it was) in the Nordic countries (where I live) due to drop in revenue and viewing of those stations (all where subscription cable television only stations, either included in a package or part of an extra channels people where able to buy).

Television networks are going out of business the same way newspapers did few years ago and nothing is going to change that fact. Blaming it on piracy is stupid and not according to facts or data on this matter.

None pay-walled article.

https://torrentfreak.com/pirat...