Pirated Pilots Released

Here's a story that plunges its steely cold reality into the heart of all TV executives, according to a TV Week article, pilots for American TV episodes have already been released online much to the chagrin of broadcasting companies.

There are two characteristics of the web that will increasingly make it hard for broadcasting people to prevent pirates from taking their stuff and airing it live across the web. One of them is that software applications are focused more on reading/writing on the web, which means that the sole purpose of a web 2.0 or web 3.0 application is to take down walls to contet and to allow open administration of content across several sites. Today I just added a BBC news feed to my Facebook page. What does that mean for the bigger picture media trends?

Theoretically, it means that, as part of the web 2.0 school of thought, I don't relate one media trademark to its own web property, or real estate. There is no such thing, really, as a static real estate on the web for media content. I like smart media, or media that tends to follow me around and insert itself into my daily routine. I like being surprised by media, as if I am engaging with it in a kind of treasure hunt. I think that most web users prefer to think of content as drifting or fluid, that it should "come with me" as I move about from one page to another, or from one trend, or hot pick, to the other.

The other thing standing in the way, is the lack of quickness on the part of some media companies to spread their content virally and for free to more spaces on the web. It seems to me that accountants make more decisions about where media content should go than the people who make the content, star in the content or who would benefit from the exposure of that content anywhere.

Could it be that the same people who are pirating the content at studios and putting it online are actually the ones who feel that the content would benefit the studio if it was released in a different manner than what is being planned? A total hypothetical, but how do you react to that assumption?

Comments (0) | Post a Comment | Link