The answer to that question, at least so far, is no.
Over the weekend, the first four episodes, plus about 15 minutes of the fifth episode, of the upcoming sixth season of FOX’s hit show “24,” were available for download, for free, on torrents. For those of you not in the know, essentially what that means is that by using a torrent client (click on the above link to “torrents” to learn more about the concept), anyone who came across the link to the show’s files could download them in a few hours (if not much faster - your network may vary). Within a few hours, pretty much all of the top television blogs, among others, picked up on the story, and thousands of people were quickly involved.
But what I found most curious (other than the fact that there appears to be a DVD that was created, that will be made available the day after the two-part, four episode premiere hits televisions, that was used as the source for the torrents, which are DVD-quality video) was the fact that exactly zero “mainstream” outlets covered the story, at least as far as I can tell as of right now. When searching “24 torrent” in Google News, sans quotes in my search, I get two Web hits or searching “fox premiere 24,” also sans quotes, I get three results.
I’ve asked a popular television columnist for her thoughts on the subject, and will update accordingly if she has a chance to respond, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts on why this kind of thing wouldn’t generate a bit more of a response, considering the potential downside. I mean, with more than a week to go before the show when the torrents hit the market, there was a huge chance for some loss of viewership, especially if people were to start making discs for their friends and family and passing them out, etc. Obviously this isn’t the first time this has happened, and while I don’t think that this was done on purpose at all, as it would be a huge risk for FOX and the studio, you’d have to think that something that was one of the big “buzzes” of the ‘net over the weekend that had potential advertiser and viewership implications could maybe get a mention somewhere.
1 response so far ↓
1 CT // Jan 19, 2007 at 2:17 pm
I’m guessing the assumption at media outlets is that the concept of torrenting movies and TV shows is so unfamiliar to the mainstream that it wouldn’t resonate. You yourself had to include a little backgrounder on it in this post.
Plus, realistically, it’s not like tons of people torrent stuff. Despite the appeal, it requires broadband connection (now common, but still tons of people with dialup), fairly robust computers (still plenty of Win98s out there), etc. It’s still a shadowy corner of the Web, dominated by hardcore tech users.
The third possibility, of course, is pressure from media companies — implied or explicit — to keep a lid on the news so as not to increase awareness. I don’t think it’s likely, given the above.