Streaming direct from America

I noticed an odd thing the other day on Channel 10 regarding the premiere of new and upcoming shows.

First some background: As most Australians realise, we get overseas shows much later than when they actually premiere in the US or wherever they originate. However, with the interweb, people in Australia find out what has happened on their favourite show, but can't actually watch it. That was until BitTorrent came along. BitTorrent is a technology that allows large files to be downloaded quickly, in a distributed way. Thus, people in the US would tape the shows on their TV's and put them online for others to view. This practise is rife in Australia, and it's not hard to see why. People know the show has come out, and feel they shouldn't have to wait 6 months or a year to view it. This has also allowed people in Oz to view shows that would probably never make it here.

I don't have any figures, but I imagine that a large proportion of the digital natives watch TV this way. This must be impacting on the total number of viewers for a series here, which would hurt the networks ad revenue. I always assumed that they would never keep up and continue on their old style media ways, but it would seem that they have learnt.

The current Channel 10 ads for House and a new show "Life" both have an ad saying that they are being "streamed direct from the US" "Watch them just after people in the US do". Also the graphics for the ad have a download progress bar as if it is being retrieved a'la BitTorrent. Now they don't explicitly say that this is because of the BT phenomena, but it seems obvious to me.

I'm actually quite pleased with the situation, as people that may have been uneasy to download the shows, can now watch them at virtually the same time. Well done to the mainstream networks for finally catching up to the rest of the world.