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

Posted by msmash on from the age-old-problem dept.

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."

12 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. And film blocking causes MORE damage by gurps_npc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:And film blocking causes MORE damage by mjwx · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  2. What is this about? by chipschap · · Score: 4, Informative

    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"...)

    1. Re:What is this about? by Calydor · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:What is this about? by mrbester · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      "Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
    3. Re:What is this about? by dwywit · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
  3. Pretty hard to prove its pirates by mr.dreadful · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  4. What a sense of entitlement! by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. Buyer beware by WolfgangVL · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.

    --
    You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
  6. And on a related note by Weaselmancer · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  7. Our vassals ... by PPH · · Score: 4, Insightful

    .. 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.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  8. Ten Network can't blame pirates by jonfr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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...