CBC To Release TV-Show via BitTorrent, For Free
Written by Ernesto on March 19, 2008CBC, Canada’s public television broadcaster has plans to release the upcoming TV-show “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” for free via BitTorrent. This makes CBC the first North-American broadcaster to embrace the popular filesharing protocol.
According to an early report, high quality copies of the show will be published the day after it aired on TV, without any DRM restrictions.
CBC is not alone in this, European broadcasters, including the BBC, are currently working on a next generation BitTorrent client that will allow them to make their content available online. The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.
The popularity of movies and TV-shows on BitTorrent hasn’t gone unnoticed. We reported earlier that some TV-studios allegedly use BitTorrent as a marketing tool, and others leaking unaired pilots intentionally.
It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Approximately 50% of all BitTorrent downloads are TV-shows, and some episodes of popular shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over thousands of sites.
It is good to see that broadcasters slowly start to realize that they can benefit from sharing their content via BitTorrent. Last month Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) made the popular TV-show “Nordkalotten 365″ available in a DRM-less format. This experiment turned out to be a huge success, while the distribution costs were close to zero.
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F**K YEAH
Good Stuff! Wonder if it will have commercials in it? Most likely I guess.
Most probably. But beats having to pay a massive monthly cable bill!
This is why Canada Rulls
this digg thing is bullshit. i submitted it first, and got shafted. oh to one day make the front page.
oh, ya, Canada rocks.
Excellent move by CBC.
yeah right… for propaganda pruposes…
What about Marketplace (it has streams, but not torrents) and La Facture?
LOL what about Hockey Night in Canada on bittorrent eh!?
As a reply to #9:
I think you’d first have to convince the NHL
i think things is going in the right derection now… they have started to see that is no other way to destrube ther content :)
[quote comment="314089"]Most probably. But beats having to pay a massive monthly cable bill![/quote]
*chuckling* in Canada, the CBC is one of those free shows broadcast, where you don’t directly pay for it (except through a small part of your taxes); anybody with an old TV and rabbit ears there picks up three or four channels*, and CBC is always one of them.
But yeah; the Prime Minister is a conservative, and decided to reduce funding for the network (something about it not being “our job” to make free TV / entertainment), so it makes sense that they would explore less expensive means of doing what they do: serving the public and paying the bills.
*for those interested, the others are CTV, Global, and in ontario TVO.
[quote comment="314121"]As a reply to #9:
I think you’d first have to convince the NHL[/quote]
lol yes true say….if everyone does end up putting their shows on bit torrent, then whats gonna stop the MLB, NHL, NFL etc from putting their games or highlight reels on it?
[quote comment="314137"][quote comment="314089"]Most probably. But beats having to pay a massive monthly cable bill![/quote]
*chuckling* in Canada, the CBC is one of those free shows broadcast, where you don’t directly pay for it (except through a small part of your taxes); anybody with an old TV and rabbit ears there picks up three or four channels*, and CBC is always one of them.
But yeah; the Prime Minister is a conservative, and decided to reduce funding for the network (something about it not being “our job” to make free TV / entertainment), so it makes sense that they would explore less expensive means of doing what they do: serving the public and paying the bills.
*for those interested, the others are CTV, Global, and in ontario TVO.[/quote]
and if you live near the city centres, you can also pick up the local CityTV and/or A-Channel and if your near the border, you might be able to pick up fox and a couple of other american networks
W00T CANADA!
They no that no one will download it. they can’t even give it away for FREE!
There will be no ads in the torrent of this show. Promise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wmylsm9DAs
And yes, Uranus, it’s free. Do what you want with it. Burn it and give it to your mom. Watch it over and over. Mash it and pass it. Seriously - no DRM and totally up to you to do with what you will.
CBC is Canada’s public television network. Since there is no shareholder (beside Canadian residents ;-) This place the CBC (also the BBC) in a very interesting position. CBC/Radio-Canada (the french network) have been working hard to make the best of the new technologies and i guess this is the next good step.
Now, the
subject that we are discussing right now on Pressing Issues with me,
Maurice Chavez, for your enlightenment and enjoyment is a very serious
one: canadians,coming to thier senses,and offering drm free broadcast,while stupid americans,holding to thier old,outdated buissness model.
conclusion :eu/canada=1 u.s=0
let’s press the issue….
absolutely mindbogglingly awesome now if only the cbc can get on canadian isps to remove their disgusting network management (aka p2p blocking) software so i can download and enjoy this program like i should.
This is good to hear. I was just ‘doing a bit of research’ the over day with the latest episode of Lost and noticed there were 40,000 seeds and 20,000 peers. Jesus… and this probably wasn’t even at peak time given the seed count. Total number of downloads must be hooge as the article here suggests.
So this got me thinking; The media companies are unlikely to ever control what’s happening given just how many people are file-sharing these days, so why don’t they release their episodes before anyone else in as good or better quality and tag a short advert at the start and end of the file. I wouldn’t go too mad, maybe a short and sweet 5-15 second advertisement? I couldn’t see that being such a bad thing, enough that people would avoid the download to wait for an unofficial rip? And it’s not like it’s gonna stop their television side of things. At least try it to see what happens… how hard can it be?
Well props to CBC anyway and I hope in the end it works out in both their, and the downloader’s favour.
Just one thing, though: “The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.”
Well, yeah, but it only shifts the load onto ISPs instead. They’re not gonna sit quietly if they find themselves being the one’s having to pay for this media revolution.
bloody hell, did some one get hit with a clue stick ?
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