15% of TV show downloaders are Australian
In an act of fortuity after my little rant about the lack of internet based TV (specifically Survivor Panama) for us Aussies.
I came across a very recent episode of Triple J’s Hack where they discuss the frustrations of living in television 3rd world country. And how many Australians are taking to the internet.
They cite a recent study that estimates that Australians are amongst the highest (2nd) television show downloaders in the world at 15%.
The report consists of another interview with Alex Malik as well as a brief interview with Josh from boxcutters.net.
The basic sentiment is that Australians don’t want to wait for shows to air here as some of them take close to a year to arrive on to our airwaves. Also, Australian television networks often play shows out of order or at ridiculous times of the morning.
There was no real mention of the fact that many of the shows won’t even air here.
Worth a listen and can be downloaded here.
I also came across a recent article from The Age which discusses the topic too. There are some good points there by both Alex Malik and Mark Pesce, Australia’s foremost thinkers on the topic.
-dg
And I’m one of them But i swear it was only for scientific reasons..yeah..I was testing download speed…
Hey DG, long time to speak.
This is a topic close to my heart.
I never used to download tv shows. Forgave the late screening times for great shows (Buffy, Scrubs, Arrested Dev etc) but the final straw for me was keeping the second part to Tarantino’s CSI finale till this year. This was not the way it was aired in the US or even New Zealand. It was simply Channel 9 greed.
And don’t get me started on sporting events like moving NRL grand final to night to chase more dollars at the expense of fans.
And not to mentioned paid advertisments on pay tv. Wasn’t one of the original selling points at Foxtel no ads???
Downloading TV shows is very addictive. I think it is the obvious evolution from downloading porn (for me anyway).
By the way, if anyone is up to date with Lost (s2 e14) talk to me as I can’t talk to the poor suckers watching it on Channel 7.
Well put Dan.
It’s basically the TV networks being totally out of touch with what’s happening outside of their little world wouldn’t you say?
They’re only now starting to realise that their real audience is going elsewhere for international content.
I think the problem with TV is that it’s a largely unmeasured medium. Not knowing too much about how ratings and viewing audiences are measured, I would imagine it’d be hard to know that their audience has gone online rather than watch content on their TV network – until reports like this start to show up and slap them in the face.
I think that the television networks have finally woken up to the fact that TV is becoming an on-demand thing with an international audience not separated by geography.
Their big problem is, they don’t seem to know what to do about it.
At least networks like CBS are moving in the right direction. But are unfortunately governed by existing agreements which prohibit them from selling to international audiences.
And as for sport fans being screwed around . . . well . . .
-dg