The Wire Shows How Modern TV Works

The Guardian's Charles Arthur sums up the Torrent-driven dilemma facing modern TV : "It's a tough reality for TV production companies to face, but video filesharing is as much a fact of life as its musical cousin, and it can have an even more brutal fallout: people grab the episode online and then don't watch it when it "officially" reaches their country, which means that audiences and advertising are down on what would be expected. That could, in theory, feed back into fewer TV programmes, or lower budgets.  Although there is a counter-argument, which is the "filesharing encourages people to buy the real thing" one. Now, many people think that's rubbish. But there may be a data point in its favour. It's this: The Wire, the much-feted programme that nobody watches, is all over the filesharing networks. Yet the DVDs from the four previously aired series are firmly in the top 10 DVD Bestsellers at Amazon. How does that work, then? Either all those folk haven't heard of filesharing for video (possible), or they want the extras that the filesharing networks can't give them. Or they want the quality."

Comments

I totally agree

[James Cherkoff]

Good!