Andre Yoskowitz
22 Mar 2008 17:43
Canada’s public television broadcaster CBC has announced that they will be releasing the upcoming TV show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via torrents. The move marks the first time a North American broadcaster will use the very popular filesharing protocol.
Although not completely confirmed, early reports show that the TV show will be published the day after the show airs on TV, DRM-free and in HD. Despite being the only North American broadcaster to have the idea, European broadcaster, especially the BBC are working on ways to distribute their content online via torrents. Torrent distribution would cut costs substantially.
Different studies have shown that approximately 50 percent of all BitTorrent downloads are TV-shows and that some hit shows such as "Heroes" can see up to 10 million downloads per new episode so it should become clear to broadcasters that torrents are a great way to get a show distributed. The only question is how to make it a profitable market.