It was back in 90s when I got frustrated to the traditional way how TV shows were distributed globally. To understand the concept fully, you first of all need to accept the fact that most of the Western world watches Hollywood-made TV shows -- they are extremely popular across the globe. But the production companies who make the shows, sell the country-specific TV rights typically at earliest, a year after the show has hit the U.S. TV. This means that the national broadcasters bid for the rights for TV shows, without making any guarantees on when they will air the shows and whether they do air them at all (shows are typically sold as "lumps" where national broadcasters have to buy several TV series -- the "lump" might contain one or two hit shows and 20 unpopular ones).
What this means is that most of the world will see the hit shows about 1-3 years after they air in the U.S. and in some cases, never. Consider our home country, Finland -- thanks to Internet, everybody knows about the upcoming hit shows, but we simply have to wait. As an example, thousands of people already wait for the mega-popular show "Lost", but even though its rights have already been sold to one Finnish TV broadcaster, they still haven't announced when the first episode will air, though they say it will be most likely in 2006. And in the U.S., the second season is already being shown.
Now, if Apple could persuade TV production companies, like Disney to allow them full worldwide distribution rights a day after the episode airs in the U.S., it would -- in the long run -- effectively cut the national broadcasters out of the picture. Surely, this would be most likely scenario only in countries where the national language is English, like in the UK, Ireland and Australia. But it would be relatively easy to do it also in the countries where subtitles are the preferred option over dubbing, like in Sweden, Finland and Norway, as the subtitling doesn't require that much resources to localize the show as dubbing does.
It would also quite effectively cut down the TV show piracy that has boomed lately, especially in Europe and Australia, where it has boomed mostly because of the fact that people want to see their favourite shows as soon as possible. If there was a legal option to do that rather than wait for years for some local broadcasting company to air the show, it would most likely prove to be a winning concept.
Rather than fighting over the country-specific broadcasting royalties, Hollywood TV companies (and to some extend, other TV production houses as well. After all, British, German, etc TV shows are quite popular across Europe as well) would make their core audiences, those who really want to see the series, happy and would later negotiate for "secondary" broadcasting rights with national broadcasters in order to earn "a couple" of extra dollars and air the show also for people who aren't willing to pay per episode and are happy to wait for few years in order to see the show.
Surely, national broadcasters wont die -- the fact that international mega shows would have another distribution format might provide more opportunities for local entertainment companies to come up with new and unique shows, tailor-made for their own local audiences as the channels would have more available free slots now that the Hollywood-made shows wouldn't take up all the prime time slots. On the other hand the current streaming technologies aren't easy enough to use for the "Joe Average", who wants to watch TV the same way he always has.
In the end it comes down to the studios to decide whether they really want to change the decades-old global distribution model and fight global TV piracy or not.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 12 Oct 2005 23:19
