It’s Heroes that breaks all the records though. Our statistics show that, across all BitTorrent sites, the two episodes from Heroes’ season opening were downloaded well over a million times each – in just one day. The vast majority of the downloads come from outside the US (92%), where shows usually air weeks, months or even years later.

The show was downloaded the most in the UK (15%), where the official season opening is scheduled for October 1st. Canada, France and Australia complete the top 5. Although most TV-broadcasters won’t be happy to read these figures, one could argue that BitTorrent has actually helped TV-shows to build a stronger, broader, and more involved fanbase.

Jesse Alexander, the executive producer of ‘Heroes’ told TorrentFreak that he thinks this is indeed the case. “People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality. TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience,” he said.

Let’s hope Alexander will be heard in Hollywood. Below is the TV-show download chart of the past week, Heroes is not included in the list, but it will surely appear in next week’s chart.

Top Downloads September 14 – September 21

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Non-US fans of Prison Break and other TV-shows sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before their favorite show airs on TV in their country. However, this is slowly changing. Earlier this week Fox announced that Jack Bauer’s “24″ will air simultaneously in the US and Germany. We expect that this example will be followed in other countries as well.

We’ll have to see whether this has an effect on our weekly download charts. The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

Top Downloads September 7 – September 14

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The millions of online viewers are catching up with the TV viewers, and are now a significant part of the show’s overall fanbase. Jesse Alexander, the executive producer of the popular TV-shows “Heroes” and “Lost” told TorrentFreak in an interview that his shows actually benefited from BitTorrent, because fans don’t have to miss a show, and often inspire others to watch.

“People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality,” Alexander told us. “TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience.”

This week the new TV-season has started, but our weekly TV-Show download chart is the last one of the summer season. Prison Break will appear in next week’s chart, probably on top. Last year, Prison Break was the fifth most popular TV-show on BitTorrent, after Heroes, Top Gear, Battlestar Galactica and Lost.

The data for the weekly download chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Top Downloads August 24 – August 31

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads August 17 – August 24

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Compared to 2004, the availability of Olympic events on BitTorrent has grown significantly, both in quantity and quality. Interestingly, the demand for Olympic torrents is the greatest in China, as 65% of the people who downloaded the Openings Ceremony come from the host country.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not pleased seeing their shows on BitTorrent sites though. Yesterday they even sent a letter (read it here) to the Swedish Minister of Justice, urging her to take on The Pirate Bay. From the letter, it looks like they have been reading last week’s article. “Our technical advisor Informs us that as many as 1 million copies of the Opening Ceremony have been illegally downloaded worldwide, with the most significant activity taking place through Pirate Bay,” they write.

The IOC claims to have contacted The Pirate Bay with a takedown request, but turned to the Minister when they got no response. The Pirate Bay denies this, and Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde writes: “The phone hasn’t rung. And I guess their e-mail probably got caught in the Chinese firewall, since TPB is blocked there.”

From the letter, it seems that the IOC is predicting that the Closing Ceremony will hit BitTorrent immediately after the fireworks. “We are also gravely concerned about the upcoming Closing Ceremony on August 24, as it is entirely predictable that illegal copies of that event will be immediately made available through the Pirate Bay.” They are right of course, and we’re afraid that the Swedish government can’t do much about it either.

Today, the Minister said in a radio interview that The Pirate Bay is not really good promotion for Sweden (although some would disagree), but that there is indeed little they can do to stop the tracker from hosting torrent files.

It is not clear why the IOC is going after the Pirate Bay, and not any of the other BitTorrent sites. Of course, they are the most outspoken, but the majority of all the Olympic torrents are downloaded from other sites. Most BitTorrent sites do take down torrents when they are asked to, so it might be a good idea to start there….

Below is this week’s chart of the most pirated TV-shows on BitTorrent, the Olympics Opening Ceremony tops the chart again. The data for the TV-torrent chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Top Downloads August 10 – August 17

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Other releases of the Olympics ceremony are popular as well, such as an iPod ready version of the first hour, a standard definition release of the opening ceremony, and a high definition capture of the torch lighting and fireworks. Three Olympic shows would have made it into our weekly TV-download chart, but we decided to count them as one.

The data of the TV-torrent chart is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

Top Downloads August 03 – August 10

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads July 27 – August 03

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 20 – July 27

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 13 – July 20

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 06 – July 13

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 29 – July 06

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 22 – June 29

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The data of the weekly download chart, collected by TorrentFreak, is gathered from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

TV-shows such as “Lost” and “Heroes” can get up to 10 million downloads per episode, in only a week.

Top Downloads June 15 – June 22

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In a recent interview for the Seattle Post, I speculated that it seemed likely that TV executives and writers were purposefully leaking their yet-to-air shows to BitTorrent to build up hype and an audience. It looks like I wasn’t too far off.

An anonymous Warner Brothers Television executive has admitted he helped leak the pilot of “Pushing Daisies“, an upcoming TV show. His reason? He wanted to make sure the show “got out there,” and wanted to “help the cause.” The executive didn’t upload it himself; he got his neighbour’s kid to do it. And the kid was delighted to, because it pushed up his ratio on some private network.

You might think, as I did, that someone made this story up. Turns out, the executive used his work e-mail ID (yep, @warnerbros.com or whatever) when he contacted Rick Ellis of AllyourTV.com. When asked about what made him leak the pilot, he replied:

I just thought it was a good idea. Even though [...] I don’t have any direct stake in the show, it’s a really great project. It’s tough to describe, though, and while it makes great sense once you’ve seen it, it’s one of those shows that will only work if people do tune in at least once.

Which, by the way, is one of the reasons that ABC and Warners are promoting the show in all sorts of venues. The pilot has been screened at everything from auditions for ABC reality shows to Comic-Con. We all believe in the show. And if I can do something that might in some small way help…I can live with that.

One last thing…some of this is also about building pressure with the network. I don’t think anyone here involved with “Traveler” was exactly thrilled with the treatment ABC gave the show. But it didn’t really have any champions inside either company. And I suppose all of us are hoping that this show gets the support it deserves.

Further evidence of TV studios embracing BitTorrent can be found in an interview with Jenji Kohan, the creator of ‘Weeds‘. The third season of Weeds was leaked around a month before it was to be aired on TV. Although another week is left before season three is broadcast to the world, hundreds of thousands of people from around the globe have already downloaded and watched episodes of it. And what does Kohan think of this? She’s glad her show’s gaining a larger audience: “Revenue aside, I don’t expect to get rich on Weeds,” she told Advertising Age jubilantly. “I’m excited it’s out there. Showtime is great, but it does have a limited audience.”

‘Weeds’ and ‘Pushing Daises’ aren’t the most popular of shows. The first has a relatively small following and the latter has yet to gain one. But both are mainstream, television shows, not podcasts. Kevin Rose being ‘cool’ with fans torrenting Diggnation a week before it’s released to non-subscribers and a primetime TV show’s creator doing the same are two vastly different notions, with the second having a significantly greater impact on traditional broadcast TV.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The Sarah Connor Chonicles, Pushing Daisies, Californication, Reaper, and Chuck are new TV shows that are about to start on their first season. The leak of The Sarah Connor Chonicles, highly anticipated by fans of The Terminator, stands out because this show is scheduled to launch in 2008. All the other leaks will air within the next few months.

For Weeds, it’s the second time that episodes have leaked before being aired on TV. Last year, exactly the same thing happened and thousands of people downloaded and watched the first episodes before they aired on TV. TV studios already offer a number of pilot episodes on the iTunes Store for free. Would it be too big a leap to assume they do the same on BitTorrent?

Here’s a list of the TV shows that leaked to BitTorrent this week, including the ‘offline’ air date:

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

So I spent a week tracking the most popular TV torrents, and LOST came out on top.

For every popular TV-show I’ve summed up all the torrents with 100+ seeds one week after the release. Initially I also planned to count torrents with less seeds, but that didn’t add much to the total number of downloads. However, it does mean that the actual figures might be slightly higher (about 5%).

These stats are from public trackers only, so the actual number of downloads is actually a lot higher (nearing 1 million downloads). However counting public trackers only will give a good impression of what the most popular TV torrents are.

This is the top 3 of last weeks most popular TV torrents).

Eztv’s “Lost S03E04 HDTV XviD-XOR” torrent was by far the most popular, and was downloaded more than 270,000 times.

The higher quality release (hr.hdtv) is becoming more and more popular and was downloaded 60,000 times. Hr.hdtv releases have a higher resolution, most often around 960×540 which is half the size of the original HDTV broadcast. A 45 minute show is usually 700MB instead of 350MB like the other releases.

Other shows that are worth mentioning are: Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Desperate Housewives, South Park, Weeds, Jericho and Nip Tuck.

You could see this as the rest of the top 10. However, it is harder to make an accurate list as the total number of downloads decreases.

The popularity of online TV distribution has not been unnoticed. Apple’s iTunes store sold over 45 million TV shows in its first year, and more and more content distributors are currently exploring ways to sell their shows online. And I’m sure we will see a decline in illegal downloads as soon as they come up with a product that can compete with the “illegal” TV torrents.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.