The Killing Writer: Illegal Downloading is "How Shows Die"

[Silverbane7]

most good shows get cancled because they dont pander to the suddenly 'normal' demographics.
ie. the crappy reality shite.

decent shows get canned because they dont have enough sex, violence or bewbs.
*points at the fact GoT is the most apparently pirated show* that has more than enough blood, boobs and bonking to be fine and yet its still pirated. becasue folks outside the us cant get it.

and yet, the list of canned decent stuff goes on...firefly and almost human and crusade...why? not enuf tits and scrapping. no ones embarrased. no one has to eat half a dead rat. no one gets voted off by the viewing public. no one is a celebrity who has to do shameing or degrading things on tv. no one is doing stupid things so the veiwers feel smarter than them.

these are the reasons good shows die.
because execs have their heads up their own arses, and prefer crap like 'ow, my balls' or 'im rich, let me out of the oven' type shows.
if its cheap, degrading, embarrasing or you can vote, they love it.

 

[Frezzato]

Whoa whoa whoa, a writer from The Killing: Who Killed Rosie Larsen is blaming pirating for killing shows? That show strung viewers along for TWO STRAIGHT SEASONS across 26 episodes and didn't give a real answer until the very end of season two. It was a non-stop string of dead ends and false leads.Then they got cancelled, probably because viewers don't appreciate being jerked around.

It wasn't until Netflix came along and revived The Killing for a proper sendoff that they wrote a decent conclusion for the main characters, which is all I really wanted.

I'm sure pirating is a problem for TV, but coming from the writer of a show that treated viewers like idiots, I have a hard time listening.

 

[Piorn]

I already pay for my TV rights, is it my fault they don't air good shows at humane times because they prefer to air garbage?
Back then we used to record shows and watch them the next morning, I don't see how watching a restream of a show that aired yesterday at 11pm would make any difference.
Not to mention the reception in my town was so bad, I had literally no TV all summer.

 

[votemarvel]

I work odd hours and as such can't always watch a show when it is broadcast. So honestly I don't see a difference between me recording a TV show to watch at a time suitable to me or downloading it to watch at a time suitable to me.

If I like the show I'll buy the series boxset.

 

[putowtin]

Simply put, one episode made available illegally is "worth the equivalent of thousands of downloads that weren't watched on a legal site.

Okay, what one? All US sites that stream their shows just tell me to fuck off cause I'm Canadian.

Agreed, sure you can go to the CW and watch the last five episodes of a show.... as long as you live in the US
Over in the UK we're a series behind your big fall shows, some across europe are two series behind


And you wonder why people pirate!

 

[CaitSeith]

Kinda hard to blame just one thing. Focus groups and CEO's that think "THIS SHOW ISN'T WHAT'S POPULAR RIGHT NOW!!! IT MUST GO!!!" Are just as bad as piracy. Hell Community was canned the first time because they didn't see the numbers from HULU and the like as real viewers.

That kinda was the point of her argument. The CEO doesn't count the illegal downloads as a valid measurement of how popular the show really is.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Agreed, sure you can go to the CW and watch the last five episodes of a show.... as long as you live in the US
Over in the UK we're a series behind your big fall shows, some across europe are two series behind


And you wonder why people pirate!

So they don't have to treat any news or discusson online about tv as a potential spoiler? Because not only is entertainment news global but so is entertainment hype (on the odd moments the 'news' isn't part of the hypetrain)? Because content providers continue to pretend there isn't a global IT infrastructure that supercedes and undermines their old distributiion methods?

 

[Hawk eye1466]

If you want to fight illegal downloading just make the shows easier to see legally, people are lazy and if they have to become members of a site or be forced through hoops to watch a show their just going to say screw this and watch the show somewhere else where it's easier.

Also if people in another country like your show it's generally a good idea to try and make it possible for them to watch the show because if you don't someone else who doesn't send money to you will.

 

[DrOswald]

Agents of Shield is a show that I would like to pick up. But I didn't keep up with it last season. I can't find anywhere to watch last season, and in such a continuity driven show I am not going to pick it up halfway through. I am going to wait until I can see the episodes in order. But the only place they are available I can find them is on apple for $30 for the season. That is just not going to happen, I don't have that kind of money to spend on a show to see if it is good. I am going to wait until it comes to one of the streaming services I already subscribe to. So they lose me, my wife, and if it turns out to be good any of my family I would have convinced to watch it. And I know I am not the only person who is in the same boat.

I would happily catch up to current on a paid streaming service or steaming the episodes supported by advertisements. But because they don't offer an affordable option and because I have a principle not to steal shit their show Agents of Shield is shit out of luck. I will never be a active viewer of Agents of Shield because their moronic strategy of trying to squeeze the geek dollar out of their viewership. If a TV shows backlog is not reasonably available the viewership stagnates and dies. As people exit the show for whatever reason there are no new viewers to replace them.

When TV shows die it is not because of piracy. It is because of mismanagement of the show. In fact, I would go so far as to say piracy helps combat the gross mismanagement of television.

Now, this is not a post in support of piracy. If they want to down in their own incompetency then we should let them. The only way these morons are going to learn is if we let them see enough potentially profitable shows go down in flames that they finally get the pattern. It is worth seeing a hundred TV shows like Agents of Shields burn if we can finally get the idea through their thick skulls that if we can't watch their show we wont watch their show. Take away their ability to blame it on the convenient scapegoat of piracy.

 

[RaikuFA]

Kinda hard to blame just one thing. Focus groups and CEO's that think "THIS SHOW ISN'T WHAT'S POPULAR RIGHT NOW!!! IT MUST GO!!!" Are just as bad as piracy. Hell Community was canned the first time because they didn't see the numbers from HULU and the like as real viewers.

That kinda was the point of her argument. The CEO doesn't count the illegal downloads as a valid measurement of how popular the show really is.

Hulu's a legal form of viewing shows. Except NBC didn't count the views on there towards the actual views of a show and canned Community because of it.

 

[CaitSeith]

Kinda hard to blame just one thing. Focus groups and CEO's that think "THIS SHOW ISN'T WHAT'S POPULAR RIGHT NOW!!! IT MUST GO!!!" Are just as bad as piracy. Hell Community was canned the first time because they didn't see the numbers from HULU and the like as real viewers.

That kinda was the point of her argument. The CEO doesn't count the illegal downloads as a valid measurement of how popular the show really is.

Hulu's a legal form of viewing shows. Except NBC didn't count the views on there towards the actual views of a show and canned Community because of it.

For NBC, Hulu views counted as much as illegal downloads. As long as they don't see the alternatives as a valid way to measure the show popularity (and potential profit), they'll keep calling them stealing.

 

[MoltenSilver]

As one of the supposedly people hurt by privacy, I absolutely disagree with this. Us on the bottom of the totempole don't feel it at all; it doesn't effect our pay or benefits (isn't based on percentage of profits, and will always be as low as can be gotten away with by the company. I've never once seen success rain downhill).
The common counter-argument to that is 'well if people pirate it, they'll stop making things and you'll be out of a job'. To me that seems patently false; these companies HAVE to make games/shows/movies to make money. Short of just straight going out of business they have to make SOME sort of product, and that means needing employees.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Meanwhile at the Game of Thrones studio....

Pretty much this.

I guess the mass pirating has to happen a few seasons in?

 

[Aesir23]

Most of those legal sites aren't available for all countries. I can't think of anything available globally other than Comedy Central. In order to get people to watch the show legally, the makers of the show need to make it available to watch legally anywhere. Expecting someone to just wait for the DVD release to see if the show is any good isn't reasonable.

Not even Comedy Central is (technically) available globally. The last time I checked Canadians were blocked from accessing the videos on there but they do have a Comedy Network version where we can watch their shows online.

 

[Ark of the Covetor]

Most of those legal sites aren't available for all countries. I can't think of anything available globally other than Comedy Central. In order to get people to watch the show legally, the makers of the show need to make it available to watch legally anywhere. Expecting someone to just wait for the DVD release to see if the show is any good isn't reasonable.

Not even Comedy Central is (technically) available globally. The last time I checked Canadians were blocked from accessing the videos on there but they do have a Comedy Network version where we can watch their shows online.

Brits too. All I want to do is watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report the morning after they're aired in the US, but because of the bullshit exclusivity deal Comedy Central have with the UK network that shows it, UK IPs are blocked from watching it on the main Comedy Central website, and the UK network doesn't make the show available for several days.

Capitalists can't have it both ways; either we live in a global marketplace, in which case you have to compete on the global stage and live with the fact that means the more informed customers will look for the best deal, and shouldn't have to deal with artificially imposed scarcity through region locking or nation-/region-based exclusivity deals; or we don't, in which case these greedy parasitical corporate shitehawks shouldn't be permitted to "offshore" any aspects of their business to take advantage of wage differentials or to hide their money in tax havens.

 

[DirgeNovak]

Except that's completely false. It's true of movies, music and games, for which success is based on sales, but a TV show's success (read: how much money they make) is based solely on ratings, which are a survey. Unless you're part of a ratings panel with Nielsen, BBM or whoever measures ratings in your country, whether or not you watch a show, and how you watch it, has no bearing whatsoever on the ratings and the show's success. Watching a show on TV and downloading it gives the exact same amount of money to the creators: zero pennies.

Of course, if you're watching online, you should ideally watch on a legal site to at least give them some ad revenue, but let's be honest here: most TV network streaming services are shit, and that's why a lot of people still prefer downloading or watching on other, more competent streaming sites. If networks can't be bothered to give us a convenient way to watch their shows, the Internet will find one.

For example, CTV's video player has no quality slider, so the video switches back and forth between several different resolutions all the time because of my mediocre download speed, resulting in five seconds of buffering every minute or two. That is insufferable. And then when an ad starts, it's only in HD, so it requires ungodly amounts of buffering, making a 30 second spot last two or three minutes. To make matters worse, if you want to watch anything more than a week old on their site, you have to register with your cable subscription info - except not all providers are supported.

If I'm not available during a show's timeslot and I forget to watch an episode or two online, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Wait a year for the DVD? Not likely. I do buy DVDs of shows I follow, a lot actually, but I don't wait for them. If I missed an episode / can only watch a show online, I'll find a way to watch it. It can be on your terms, or not.

tl;dr: Give us a convenient way to watch them online and people will come. It's not about "sticking it to the man", it's only about convenience.

 

[Stryc9]

Or, lying to your audience is how shows die. Telling your audience that you're going to resolve the entire plot by the end of the season and then pulling that away at the very end with a bullshit gotcha twist, pissing off the people that have been watching your show waiting for the payoff and then telling them they'll have to wait a year for it. That's another way shows die.

 

[Entitled]

Entertainment media as a whole, has been on a notable rise of revenues for over a decade, just around the time online piracy became commonplace.

TV in particular, is often referenced as being in the middle of "Second Golden Age", with a plethora of high quality dramas beyond just the shlocky procedurals and camp action that we came to expect from it in the 80s-90s.

The real problem of piracy arguments, is that they hold an utterly unfalsifiable comlaint about the way the world works. "If only piracy wouldn't exist, the industry would have even higher profits".

Yes, you would. And if the ocean would be made of sand, it would be a lot dryer. So what?

This only works as an effective call to arms, if the public truly fears that their way of life is in outright DANGER, not just as a random wish about how you would like to make a bit more money. So from these anti-piracy perspectives, the industry is always on the edge of utterly collapsing, where russian teenagers downloading shitty movie camrips, or cable subascibers downloading last week's show they forgot to record themselves, are always only one step away from "What if everyone ALWAYS illegally downloaded EVERYTHING?"

They are expecting us to feel guilty about the minor comforts of freedom, with no tangible connection to something that we should be concerned about.