Last year I reported that American TV networks are in trouble. BIG trouble.
“ABC has contracted with Apple to distribute $2.00 per pop DRM-infected episodes of “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” for download to view exclusively on the video iPod’s microscopic screen. NBC has begun distributing it’s "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" online as well.”
At the time, CBS was also trying something new: streaming selected episodes of “Threshold” for a limited time.
No one, other than gullible iPodders, Apple freaks, and anyone dumb enough to actually use places such as iTunes or even Napster, is going to fork out a couple of bucks to download crappy quality asf/wmv/quicktime video with attached DRM, which can then only be played on the computer to which it was downloaded – for a limited time.
CNN finally realised last year that people aren’t willing to pay for a Real Networks Gold Pass in order to watch their poor quality video, so they decided to offer free video streaming of selected stories. Unfortunately CNN still demands money for live, commercial free video using their new “Pipeline” subscription service, no doubt still in poor quality wmv/rm video.
Besides the news, one can also watch “Meet the Press” online by logging on to MSNBC within 24 hours of its broadcast.
Still, all of these programs and news stories can be found in any p2p network.
Viewers outside of the US don’t want to wait years for their favorite shows to air in their own countries – if they ever air there at all. We’ve heard from readers in many countries, most notably Australia, who’ve expressed extreme dissatisfaction with the program directors of their local stations and the way in which they buy and schedule their programs.
Apparently, it’s all to do with the seasons. Station managers claim that while the northern hemisphere’s winter corresponds with their summer, they have fewer viewers and so wait until the earth turns in order to air new TV programs.
This is of course a load of crap, as proved by the tens of thousands of p2pers from down under – and elsewhere - logging on every day in order to download and watch their favorite shows in their own time.
When NBC’s “Profiler” first aired approximately ten years ago, NBC had recently launched it’s TV station “NBC Europe”, which it had bought from “Super Channel”. “Profiler” aired in Europe one week after its US broadcast, and “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” were added on a one day delay.
Several years later NBC Europe was bought out by the German station Giga and all NBC programming was lost, until relatively recently when CNBC started being broadcast on a separate channel. Leno and Conan returned, but on a 3-4 day delay, although both “Meet the Press” and “NBC Nightly News” air live (I believe).
I don’t live in the UK, but I receive BBC1, BBC2, and BBC World through my cable company’s digital service, as well as the free BBC Prime which has been part of my regular cable package for more than a decade.
Last year, many new TV shows were being sold on DVD before they were even aired outside the US. And some were starting to be sold even before their initial broadcast run was completed.
In the past, new programs and movies didn’t make it to Europe for several years, if at all. Now (where I live) it’s not uncommon for a program to start its run immediately after the season finishes up in America, and sometimes even overlapping the US broadcast. As well, when a new series begins here, often several episodes are shown in one night, or one episode every night, and sometimes repeated later a few hours later if one misses it. But besides that, because I receive TV stations from several different countries, most are on approximately the same broadcast schedule, so an episode missed on one channel can easily be found on another.
So what’s my solution?
It might not go over well with the anti-globalisation crowd, of which I count myself a member, but if the TV studios are actually serious about combating “illegal” sharing of their programs (although we know p2p won’t ever go away), this is what they need to do:
First, forget about suing everyone and their mothers. It’s not going to work.
Like CNBC, the other networks need to establish their own channels in other countries. Just as there’s CNN International, CNBC, and BBC Prime, there should be international versions of CBS, ABC and FOX, airing the same prime-time programs as seen in the US. Even if it were on a delay of a day or two, they would grab a huge audience.
The argument that they couldn’t dub or subtitle episodes in time doesn’t wash. CNBC, CNN International and BBC Prime all don’t dub their programs. Their channels are aimed at English-speaking people. And because BBC Prime airs older programs from their archives, they have time to add teletext subtitling to selected shows.
As for people who don’t speak English, they’ll tune in to their regular stations for broadcasts in their own language.
Although this has also become a problem for several countries. For instance, the technology exists – and is used – for two-channel stereo broadcasts where both the original language of a film or TV show can be broadcast at the same time as the language of the country it’s airing in.
Unfortunately, several large TV stations in some European countries got together a few years ago to block the cross-border transmission of two-channel stereo, so people who live in a different country can only receive the foreign-language audio. One presumes that the US TV networks and movie studios had a hand in this legislation.
But that legislation is outdated and needs to be scrapped.
Why can’t this be done? Why can’t these networks get it together and give their audience what it wants, when it wants it? Why is it that only Rupert Murdoch’s SkyTV and BSkyB can get a handle on the technology of using satellites to broadcast world-wide, but the “superior” US networks either haven’t a clue, or are too stubborn and greedy to invest in 21st Century technology. Instead, they waste their time and effort lobbying for, and arguing over, different HDTV formats for television and DVDs when the rest of the Western world is way ahead of them on those fronts.
If launching new channels is too much to ask for, the other alternative is to offer their channels in real time over foreign digital cable and satellite services. If BBC, CNN, CNBC, E!, MTV and others can do it – and have been doing it for years! - what’s stopping the major US networks?
I know that many filesharers would appreciate and use this type of service more than having to download everything through p2p networks.
The technology is there and the audience is there, waiting. The world is waiting for – and expecting – what they want, when they want it.
