P2P and TV 381
Khuffie writes "According to Wired, Warner Bros. Entertainment recently passed on a pilot of a show called Global Frequency. However, due to a leak on bit-torrent the pilot episode has reached thousands of viewers who are clamouring for more, and has given the show a new lease on life. What's more interesting is what the show creator learned. From the article: "It changes the way I'll do my next project," said Rogers. If he owned the full rights, he said, "I would put my pilot out on the internet in a heartbeat. Want five more? Come buy the boxed set." Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore."
Torrent (Score:5, Informative)
Already tried & failed (Score:5, Informative)
Stephen King tried it. He started a new book and gave the first chapter away for free, putting subsequent chapters up for sale; when enough people bought a chapter he would write & publish the next one (all on-line). It was a dismal failure: the second chapter was bought by few and re-distributed by many; as a result, chapter three was never published. Author and audience couldn't agree on merely chapter 2.
Family Guy's revival after internet distribution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More Stupidity! (Score:5, Informative)
Nope. If I create a product that costs $10 to manufacture, sell it for $12, but sell 10,000,000 units, then I have made $20,000,000 profit on a 16% margin. On the other hand, if I create a product that costs $6 to manufacture and sell 10,000 unit for $12 a piece, I'd have made $60,000 on a 50% margin. Given the choice, most people would go for the 16% margin because it means more money.
The risk, however, is that you might fail to capture the market and only sell a small number. Any up front costs (which can be considerable in high profit dealings) are lost. Now if you consider that the 16% margin has an upfront cost of $100,000, but the 50% margin has an upfront cost of only $1,000, how do you think that effects the risk/reward ratio?
Re:Already tried & failed (Score:2, Informative)
Torrent (Score:1, Informative)
there are more financial facets (Score:3, Informative)
Jedidiah,
Consider these other aspects of a TV Pilot. In the real world where we all live, everyone working on a TV pilot is paid a minimum fee with contingency clauses in their contracts that mean these actors, set designers, costumers, directors, makeup artists, etc. will get a cut of the action if a network chooses to buy the show. So it's a big gamble for these people. For an actor, I think the day rate is like $800. And these acting gigs come few and far between. So a lot is riding on this for a lot of people.
If a show fails to get picked to run on a TV network, it's shelved. But there's an investment in there both from the production company and all the above-mentioned workers. The production company will continue to shop it around. They may even re-edit it.
If the pilot gets leaked, prospective buyers are going to look at it not always that there's a positive buzz, but that interest in this comodity has disappated.. it's been diluted. A prospective buyer is thinking that X number of people have already seen it (on the internet) and are unlikely to sit through commercials to watch it again when they've got a commercial-free version already available. Those eyeballs watching the pilot are critical to the prospective buyer because they've got to use those Nielsen stats from the airing of the pilot to then lasso advertisers.
So by leaking this shelved pilot, it decreases the chances that those crew members will get paid properly for their work.
Mininova Link (Score:2, Informative)
Just in case you were curious, as I was...
FYI: The torrent's hosted on Demonoid [demonoid.com], so if you're getting "unconnectable" errors, you might want to try registering there.