TV People Realizing That The Internet Is Global
from the shocker dept
It's kind of amusing to read this NY Times article about how the producers of Doctor Who had the brilliant idea of showing the latest season in the UK and the US on the same day this season, rather than showing it in the UK and then delaying the US release for a while. It's typical that TV shows are released at different times in different countries, which is a massive frustration to fans, and generally encourages more file sharing in that people want to know what happens (and what others are talking about online). So it took a huge revelation to realize that perhaps these kinds of regional differences in release schedules is pointless. That realization is good -- but what's amusing is how it's made out to be such a big revelation, when it's something that plenty of people have been talking about for years... and wondering why the TV folks took so long to figure it out.
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I say this as a UKer who downloaded all 6 seasons of Lost.
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DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU...
*steps off soapbox*
*hands over bullhorn*
*receives a cookie*
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What am I missing here?
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TV licenses in the UK are required if you are actively watching "live" broadcast TV. So if, I dunno, Doctor Who is going out on the BBC and you're watching it on the TV in your house, you need a TV license. If you're watching a Doctor Who DVD, you don't need a TV license.
Basically if you're picking up a channel as it is currently being broadcast, you need a license. If you're watching DVDs, videos, playing consoles or using your TV for some other purpose, you don't need one. This particular issue got my goat a while back because the inspectors going around my campus were bullying people into thinking that you need a license if you watch any form of moving picture, including youtube. It's bollocks; watching TV as it's aired is all you need one for, and that includes internet services like the BBC iPlayer.
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No offense, but why do Brits sound like 5 year olds when they get angry?
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It also seems that if you don't have a licence you shouldn't have anything able to receive signals - ie don't tune your TV in, don't plug the aerial in, and don't install the TV receiving software on your computer. I think if you have a TV all set up and plugged in without a good explanation the authorities are likely to determine that you should have bought a licence and fine you.
I don't really know how it works with the new technology though. You need the licence to receive TV signals - even if you only ever watch Sky and never watch terrestrial broadcasts. You need the licence if you watch or record the live signals. However, you don't need a licence to watch pre-recorded stuff like bought DVDs or catch-up stuff like the BBC's iPlayer.
So how do services like Sky+ fit in? If you only ever watch things using Sky+ (ie on demand, not as broadcast) do you need a licence?
Seems that you don't - but I can see you having to argue that in court.
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They have laws that control the images, music, likenesses of the people and they have to meet those contractual requirements when exporting.
There is also the DVD/BluRay sales, and digital download sales to be made.
In the land of DVRs and HTPCs they fear fans will get high quality files and ignore their other offerings.
But then I saw several seasons of Dr Who on Amazon Goldbox today for 32ish... down from the $80 retail price.
I have to believe they are more popular at 32 than 80, and at that price most Who fans, even those who dared to download, would be counting pennies to be able to buy the box sets.
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Don't you mean digital rentals? I'm not aware of any place that sell DRM free video downloads, and as long as the videos have DRM, you will never truly own them. Your ability to play them only lasts as long as you can get a valid license file for them.
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The BBC are against filesharing. They lobbied the UK Government to rush through the Digital Economy Act (Three strikes and you're disconnected.)
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They do get technically get paid by the eyeball for shows they license out, so it is in their commercial interest that the other networks attract large viewing figures so that they get more money to plough back into producing decent TV.
Less sharing (by releasing simultaneously both sides of the Atlantic) is definitely in their interests.
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Re: Why the BBC care
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As soon as we had the capability to get around regional restrictions with the internet, the TV industry should have noticed and should have changed right away. Instead they fought and cried and screamed at piracy..when they could have done the smart thing and released the same show, everywhere, at the same time.
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It's hilarious because i have access to all of these networks in my cable package and can watch these shows if i schedule the right time to sit down and view them or if i remember to record them and yet THEY (these websites like the american ABC, NBC, CBS even Showtime, HBO etc.) are blocking my internet service provider from accessing on their websites based on some ridiculous regional copyright nonsense.
I don't get it... the people in these corporations and businesses don't know right from left at all and I would wish that they wake up and smell the coffee for a change.
No wonder people are downloading all the time coming back to the topic of this post and especially when productions are aired at different times globally, talk about think skulls.
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Re: My Comment
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Nope, they still don't get it.
So, no, they still don't get it. They're still missing the main benefit offered by DVRs and file-sharing: watching TV shows when it suits you rather than some exec's idea of the best time to reach their target demographic.
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Re: Nope, they still don't get it.
Not only do we get the Episodes of Doctor Who weeks (sometimes months) later, we also get a cut down version of the "making of" confidential show that on UK/US TV is approx 45mins per episode whereas in Australia its only approx 15mins. The phrase "Exterminate" comes to mind when thinking of ABC programmers and buyers
Though talking of the newest synchronised release of season 6, there are also three other reasons, other than 'torrents' why it was done as it was.
1/ First time EVER that Doctor Who had a specific storyline wholly set in the USA (and filmed there too) allowing the new US audience to have more ownership with the franchise
2/ The storyline for the first 1omins of the show was set on the 22nd of April 2012. Might seem insignificant but as per first episode season 5 (and previous) the show tries to start on that specific timelined date
3/ the most significant reason for synchronisation for FANS across the US and UK and that pisses any AUST/NZ [or other countries] off is... SPOILERS!
It was the #1 Trending topic on Twitter when it was shown. It is all over Tumblr and Facebook with people talking about the show and gifs/jpgs being published everywhere. And believe me any Fan of the show (I go back to Jon Pertwee era myself) looks at these sites and reads about it. SPOILERS ARE ANNOYING!
Luckily I myself saw the first episode the day after it came out in the UK/USA. It came to me in a time-shifted package I sent to myself next week ;)
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Re: Re: Nope, they still don't get it.
And, trust me, you're not missing much. When you compare a 45-minute "Confidential" to its 15-minute counterpart, the extra half hour feels like "filler" and archive stuff not actually directly related to the episode.
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Maybe there is merit to some of this, but as industry outsiders it is not possible to have a firm grasp and/or insight into all of the factors that go into the decision making of broadcasters. It seems reasonable to assume that contracts stretched across international boundaries have an impact. Broadcast preferences in one country may not be sufficient to generate ad revenue that makes the effort a worthwhile endeavor. Language barriers may likewise present challenges that are not easily overcome. Local customs or societal mores may serve as an impediment.
Thus, while it is easy to lob grenades over the transom at broadcasters, there may very well be significant obstacles that must be overcome.
"I want it and I want it now" may be the mindset of some consumers, but this does not mean that this mindset is as easy to meet as some may want to believe.
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As an outsider I'd still go with dumb
Right, so how much time did they have
before they realized
since they realized
the necessity due to the change brought by the internet??
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Companies can even do it to themselves, with requirements for internal processes that must still be followed even when they no longer make sense, and even the people that know better put up with it because they have more important battles to fight.
This is why merely *knowing* about The Innovator's Dilemma isn't enough to avoid it. Locking in multi-year contracts is just part of doing business, but when the technology is changing rapidly, that contract which seemed like such a boon when it was signed may become a liability just a year or two down the track.
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BBCA
I hope the International iPlayer app is released soon..
E
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Also Bow ties are cool.
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Last season is available in HD on demand. Well, most of them, it's quite stupid: 2 through 6, 8 through 11, and 13, so I had to watch 1, 7, and 12 in standard def on my HDTV with my HD box from Comcast. Why the hell aren't all of them there?!
*cuddles Comcast hate*
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I must add that - so far - the On Demand episodes are blissfully free of commercials.
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The purchase of home media isn't that old, and it doesn't take a genius to see that it can't be assumed a reliable income into the future. If this is what they're trying to protect, then good luck to them. It won't work.
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It does not exist. There's a large # of reasons that international sales are just that, sales to territories. And while money is one of them, regionalization (think, digital personalization) is one of them. Subtitling, dubbing into other languages, culturally acceptable ad sales materials, etc. are others.
Now, that's not a defense of the way thing are now, but there really truly *are* things that can and should be "value adds" in regional sales of content in a global market.
But generally speaking, regional distribs/resellers (if you will) of content are far further behind the tech curve than we are; so to suggest these newer digital models to the middlemen (who really can add some local value), really threatens their own businesses, and on top of that, they're not technically capable of delivering to their broader audience in ways that provide good experiences to their audience and still satisfies tracking and reporting (at the very least, even forgetting DRM, which the US rightsholders are, of course, unwilling to do) requirements.
Anyway, it's a little thornier than we'd all like it to be for sure. It will, eventually get sorted out.
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Answer to "What took them so long?"
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The problem with this is that the internet has made hype global. 20-30 years ago, a movie could come out and you'd hear that it has good reviews or whatever, through the news, but that'd be it. Then you waited for it to come out in your country and went to see it. Nowadays, you see trailers for it before they start airing on TV, you hear people discussing and raving about it, you see entertainment headlines talking about how great it is, your friends in other countries go to see it and come back talking about it and so on. And given that it's so damn easy to pirate a film, that's the option people take rather than wait months for this thing that everyone's been talking about.
For TV shows, it's even worse in many cases due to region codes. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is one of my favourite shows, for example, and it hasn't ever been released on region 2 dvd. So I have to use an unlocked DVD player and import DVDs, which is a hassle.
What confuses me even more are when companies set up a free streaming service, then block other countries from seeing it, even if it's ad supported. Channel 4 in the UK, for example, has a youtube channel with basically every episode of every popular show they've done on it, but you can't access it outside of the UK. This seems particularly silly since the episodes come with adverts in them (before it starts and one or two half way through) which, if I understand youtube's advertising properly, could easily be changed for region specific adverts depending on where the user is watching from. There's literally a world market out there and it's being ignored by the people who could make money from it, so they're being beaten to the punch by the people who ensure no one can make money from it.
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A TV company can't be successful telling its advertisers "Oh, by the way, the folk *really* interested in seeing the show you're buying advertising in will already have seen it on YouTube".
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Doctor Who has a pretty small budget, and it's still that largest SFX budget of any BBC show. Since Doctor Who began rebroadcasting, the writers (Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat) have always wanted it to be a simulcast. The biggest hurdle to that was, atypically, regionalisation issues. The sole exception to this was America, where no-one wanted rebroadcast rights for the first two seasons.
I fully agree with having a localised version for most territories available for torrent, of just the episode, with the extras being on DVD/Blu-ray.
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Re Dr. Who
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How the BBC missed the point still
I wrote a post on the history of BBC mistakes in this area.
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Thoroughly Confuzzled....
Just how the hell am I supposed to tell the difference between The Onion and TechDirt if you title and write articles like this????
Now Im not even sure how to comment on this crap. My common sense is completely thrown out of whack now. Ummmm yeah the internet is global. Soooo that means that TV People all over the globe now have a HUGE and NEW market for all their OLD content. Who gives a crap if the ad revenue is a fraction of what it used to be when you can rake it in for content that you haven't been using for DECADES.
Instead of whining about piracy; but... but... but...PIRACY. I'm surprised that at least one of those greedy f*cks hasn't said; but... but... but... new revenue on shit we aren't even using.
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Crunchyroll as an example
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I'm so stoked!
This time around, I went to my cable services on-demand function and whammo! Watched the 1st episode within hours of its release.
About frickin' time.
Next task: slashing the prices of the Tom Baker DVDs. I would buy all of them IF they weren't $25+ a pop. Fuggedaboutit!
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www = World Wide Web, go figure.
I still doubt they understand this.
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