Due to the massive increase in online piracy, many non US countries are adopting a new policy of Showing episodes more quickly to prevent this.

New Zealand is one such country, its free to air TV networks are showing hit tv shows sooner.

Hit show Heroes is amongst the list of top illegal downloads with copies of the shows reaching cyberspace as soon as they have premiered.

As a result of this, top shows which include House, Private Practice and Survivor are now being shown within days of the original showing in the US.

TVNZ spokeswoman Megan Richards and TV3 marketing director Roger Beaumont confirmed they had ‘tightened’ the turnaround for screening international shows, particularly those from the USA.

“The potential for illegal downloading is a factor in that,” says Beaumont.

Tony Eaton from the Federation Against Copyright Theft said that the authorities in New Zealand had yet to conduct extensive research into illegal downloading.

‘Our primary focus has been the film industry but in saying that we have turned our attention to television more. It makes sense for networks to make shows available as soon as possible on television here.’

The trend may explain why the big two free to air networks offer legal downloads of top shows for a limited period after they screen on TV.

Richards further commented:- ‘It may be that online availability of programming is actually having the effect of boosting television viewing that is certainly the case with catch up TV. Having the ability to catch up online on a couple of missed episodes of a favourite programme actually encourages the viewer to stay with the series as it runs on TV’

In spite of the illegal downloads, Beaumont said total TV viewing has increased by 5 per cent on last year.

“That’s more people watching TV, and watching it for longer.”

Internet piracy via file-sharing networks accounts for the majority of these losses, with about $33m in lost consumer spending. The buying of illegally-pirated movies or files was responsible for more than $24m in lost consumer spending in 2005.

This situation is an obvious result of broadband use and freely available torrents, p2p networks and illegal uploading of tv and movie files, and gives the major studios a major headache.

worldtvpc.com

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