After the recent complaints over Australia’s delayed broadcast of the Lost finale along with my own experience as a follower of Supernatural still behind in the storyline (see my other unhappy blog posts about that), I’ve been left to one conclusion – TV networks need to embrace globalisation rather than fight it for their own gains.

With the internet and social media now allowing the entire world to be connected instantaneously to each other, the delaying of broadcasting television shows overseas seems to have no valid purpose outside of marketing and profit. I can see no difficulties in the digital age involved in sending a new episode of a TV show to networks all around the world in an instant, digital pirates manage it straight after a show has gone to air.

From my understanding, the real reason studios delay each premiere is for marketing purposes. The idea seems to be that while the show can be broadcast globally, the crew behind the show can’t be sent globally to promote it all at once. Understandable but surely unnecessary in the digital age. Promotional campaigns through digital media outlets like Facebook and Twitter can lead to huge success for a show, just look at the amazing success of Glee. Not only does it hit twitter’s trending list quite often but songs from the show appear regularly in iTunes top 10 downloads. Compare this to the negative effects of ignoring social media or working against it – fans of Lost in Australia had to avoid social media and carefully choose what websites they visited to avoid having the ending spoilt before it aired in Australia. Forcing viewers to wait several days just because Channel Seven decided Wednesday would give them the best ratings is disrespectful to all the fans by putting ratings before its loyal viewers.

After the season 4 finale of Dexter in America (which aired before the season had even begun to air in Australia), I almost found out the major twist at the end on Facebook without meaning to. I won’t say how much was revealed but it definitely ruined part of the surprise. After all the work that goes into planning and scripting a series, surely the last thing networks want is to have the ending ruined for international viewers?

It is here which lies a huge part of the problem. Networks want to build buzz, they want people to talk about the show over social media – it builds up a show in amazing ways. However it builds up the show internationally not just locally. They want to do this while at the same time restricting when other viewers around the world can watch the show. It just doesn’t make sense and leads to people getting the shows online rather than through the methods the studio gets paid for. Will there be a need for national copyright restrictions on services like Hulu and American TV network websites if all viewers are seeing your show within about a day or so of its initial broadcast?

Why not open up these restrictive broadcasting borders, allow your shows to be marketed to the world as the internet and social media are already doing and make things easier for everyone?

If there was ever a piece of news to frustrate the Internet community, it was this one.

Hulu, the site which broadcast TV shows and movies for free using advertising to support itself, appears to be getting ready to start charging for content. Apparently – “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online” (the iTunes store seems to have been ignored in that quote). The service which so many praised for finally getting things right is about to turn away from its audience. Seems like perfect timing for me to let out my huge frustration with everything that’s currently wrong in the copyrighted and complicated world of the internet and copyright. I mean, as an Australian, I wasn’t even allowed to watch Hulu anyway.

Me and illegal downloads
As most people know, I’m a pretty moral guy. Despite being an IT student and having the ability to illegally download movies, music, software and games from the internet for free like so many others, I pay for them. I’ve refused free cracked copies of software despite not being able to afford it any other way. I like to do the right thing.

The iTunes Store
One of Hulu’s competing services which actually charges for content, the iTunes music store, definitely doesn’t make it easy to do the right thing. Whilst I download my music from iTunes and find it to be quite a good service, the DRM (digital rights management) protection they place on my downloads just treats the customer who is doing the right thing as a criminal who can’t be trusted. It places a limit on the number of computers you can have the file on, the number of copies you can make of it onto CD and so on. Upon getting a new hard drive for my PC and installing Windows again from scratch, I had to reinstall iTunes and transfer over my songs. Rather than making it easy, I was forced to authorise this “new” computer. Once again, I was the criminal who could not be trusted. How dare I try to play music I have bought legally on a new version of Windows! Sure, it wasn’t that difficult to authorise the PC, but why is it even necessary? Why should I have to prove myself every time I want to play music on a new PC?

When you can’t buy content even when you want to
Copyright issues on iTunes have even prevented me from purchasing content I willingly was going to pay for. When Channel Ten went from announcing the return of Supernatural to removing it from their schedule indefinitely 5 days later, I decided to see if I could purchase it elsewhere. Channel Ten had already put the show on hold for weeks without notice last season, so I really didn’t want to have to put up with this all over again.

Americans could watch the new season for free on CWTV but of course, due to copyright restrictions, Australians aren’t allowed to watch. Sure, I could trick the site into thinking I’m in America, but for now I have decided not to go down that path due to the whole being moral thing.

I then saw a link to download it on the iTunes store. Perfect! Or so I thought. Upon clicking the link and finding the episodes I wanted to see, I tried to log in. Rather than getting the chance to download it, I was told my account could only be used in the Australian iTunes store and was redirected back to the Australian iTunes store (felt more like I was kicked out as there was no option to stay where I was). I then searched for Supernatural in the Australian iTunes store but had no luck (of course).

I then googled to find out if I could get an account with the American iTunes store. Apparently not without having to enter in some false information, purchasing an American iTunes gift card from overseas and slightly breaching the iTunes Terms of Service.

Exclusive rights?
So even when I’m eager to pay to view these episodes, I’m not allowed just so Channel Ten can wait until they can gain the most from their exclusive rights to the show. Whilst so many around the world are enjoying the new season of Supernatural (including many in Australia illegally), I’m having to wait due to my morals and the decisions of television networks. In a digital age, do Channel Ten really have the exclusive? When so many Australians will have watched it on the Internet, where is the motivation to watch on commercial television? Sure, there are those like Hamish and Andy, who mentioned on their show that they’d illegally download these things but just don’t know how (they mention pirating stuff after the Pizza Hut bit in that link) but even those who don’t know how to find it usually know someone who do. It’s no longer an exclusive. That was exactly the point of networks “fasttracking” TV shows to show them at the same time in the US. That was a great system but I haven’t noticed Channel Ten doing it anymore.

Should I just watch it and pay later?
The simple solution I’ve heard to all this is to watch it online “illegally” now and then buy the DVD later. I’d get to watch it and keep up with the rest of the Supernatural fans and the team still get the money from the DVD sales. I’ve known people to do this and whilst not technically legal, really shouldn’t be that much of a crime? Though to be honest, people shouldn’t have to go to all this trouble. If people are downloading your shows for free, there is one simple solution – find a way to make money from people watching your shows for free. Get them to watch these shows for free from you, rather than from someone else.

The solution
Already when networks like Channel Ten show repeats of shows online, they make sure to put advertising in between. Surely it wouldn’t be so hard to broadcast shows online to a global audience and target advertising to suit each region. The only issue in all this is getting the television production studio rights to all of this content. I’d assume it would be nearly impossible – iTunes still can’t do this globally despite requiring users to pay for their content.

What logical reason is there for regional restrictions? Why doesn’t globalisation apply to television? Why not have one single release date for a show globally? Is it solely because the networks are holding onto giving traditional TV networks around the world first chance at broadcasting? If so, shouldn’t you take this chance away if they don’t use it effectively?

In summary
If people can’t see the shows they’re looking to see (e.g. Supernatural) and are turning to the internet, then the traditional TV networks in Australia are obviously failing in their job to deliver this content when people want it.

If moral people like me turn to the Internet and still can’t legally acquire the shows they want (whether for free or not), then television production studios are failing to pick up where these traditional TV networks are failing.

Is the point of copyright law to make things so difficult with restrictions? Or is it to ensure the author gets their fair share for uses of their work?

In the end, I’ve gone without seeing these new episodes of Supernatural with no idea when Channel Ten plans on actually broadcasting them (likely to be next year) despite the fact I could easily watch them if I found it illegally right now. Why be moral when every effort to do so seems to discourage it? How much longer will people like me be patient enough to wait and put up with it all to change?