Australians, No1 when is comes to Bittorrent. Wake up 7, 9 and 10

Apparently the finical figures on free-to-air TV have dropped, and who’s to blame? Illegal downloading of course! Well that’s what the networks are saying. Download technologies like Bittorrent are taking advertising revenue away from Australian networks.

Yes the figures of Australian using the software are high, number 1 in fact.
“Despite making up only 0.3 % of the world’s population, Australians account for 20% of BitTorrent traffic.”
In relation to that figure “The U.S, with a population of 300 million people, account for 7% of BitTorrent traffic”

How could this be? Simple, if you wanted to purchase an item lets say a mobile phone. It was the latest and greatest. You go into a store and they don’t have it. Would you:
A. Go to another store that did have it?
or
B. Just buy something else they had at that store which was old, outdated?

I think many of us would say B. If you relate this back to Australian networks. They are the store not providing their customers with what they want and when they want it. So what do we do, we look at other avenues to get the programs we want to watch.

Australian networks are always holding back to watch the success of programs in the US, then buying then to play on Australian TV months after it has aired in the US.

“The locally produced “hits” in this county are generally cheaper imitations of international reality formats, such as Big Brother, Australian Idol and The Biggest Loser. This cosy situation has made Australian television the most profitable in the world. But how much longer can this go on?”

Not only do they leave a window between content being aired in US and Australia. When they air it they can’t even play the whole season at once, without either missing episodes, playing repeats of older seasons or changing the times programs are aired.

I have been attempting to watch the latest season of “House” only to find Ten playing repeats between new episodes.

Whilst watching the 3rd season of “Nip/Tuck” (Yes I know), I found myself on Amazon purchasing the DVD of the series and watching the whole season before the 4th episode had been played on Australian TV.

Channel Ten has made some moves in the right direction, but there is a long road ahead for Australian Networks. I also would argue that just recycling content and allowing it for download, isn’t using the full potential of interactive/online media distribution.
I’m not sure what Australian networks have in mind, if anything at present. All I can say is they would, be smart about your next move.

Related Articles:
BitTorrent, Australia and TV Networks
http://forums.mactalk.com.au/showthread.php?t=32403