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.
Previously: VLC Player Vulnerable to Remote Hijack
Next: The Pirate Bay to BBC: We Don’t Want To Be Information Slaves
67 Responses
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 ?
Now if only the bloody yanks will wake up and see the light
this is awesome! way to go cbc. long time mississaugan here.
Even if there are commercials chances are they wouldn’t be as long as on tv; like with abc.com
..that shows one commercial what? 3 times?
Yes, let people waste their bandwidth on endless free-to-air TV series instead of stuff they don’t want you to. You could just get it off TV. I doubt that anyone outside of Canada would want it anyway (?) So maybe you can only videotape it, but is it really worth archiving digitally? You might only want to watch it once again, or not ever again.
Including ads would only lessen the incentive, as they can be removed when recording anyway.
I don’t see why they have a problem with Bittorrent in the first place as all these shows can be recorded legally from TV anyway.
If they ever did overcook official releases with commercials people would just revert to downloading unofficial rips. :-D
Tip ‘o the hat to Rick Mercer and whoever @ the CBC spear-headed this. I love my Ceeb. It’s what PBS would be if it wasn’t busy begging for money every second week, or the BBC if it wasn’t too busy serving Her Majesty & the Lord’s interests.
Mind you, every Conservative government since Dief (and a few Liberal ones too) has tried to move money away from the CBC. Not that it would have anything to do with their independent News service, oh nooo..
CTV has as much independence as their owners at Bell Media allow them, notatallthankyouverymuch. You might as well watch CNN or FOX news. IMO you will find no better newscast than The National with Peter Mansbridge. Excellent world coverage and fair regional representation in the coverage of the political especially. Pure CBC Gold.
But back on topic, I can’t imagine commercials being imbeded in the on-line downloads. Commercials are added by the regional affiliates, and the broadcast tapes would have only commerical que markes. No, if there’s anything at all it’ll be a CBC promo bump at the beginning or end…
As to who has previously downloaded the Rick Mercer report, I do believe aAF has released it from time to time, and it was certainly available on #DD (RIP! We all miss you still!). Being topical-humour, such as This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Daily Show, or The Colbert Report, I wouldn’t keep an archive, but I’m sure some out there will…
As for ISPs “paying the cost of this media revolution”, no, the costs will be passed onto the consumer, just as soon as enough of them make a stink about protocol-interference and traffic-shaping.
Come on.. NRK has released one of their most popular TV shows via BitTorrent in HD (1024*576) for some time now.. And they release other shows occasionally in HD as well, free of charge without commercial via BitTorrent.
ha ha ha . very funny . if it’s pay , no one will watching it
Welcome after, Canada.
~Norway
Incredible, says you. Inevitable, says I.
We’ve just made the official announcement this morning:
http://www.cbc.ca/nextprimeminister/blog/2008/03/canadas_next_great_prime_minis.html
And there will be no commercials in the torrent :)
Well, i’v never ever downloaded any TV program from the internet.
TV in brazil is only SHIT!
I rarely watch tv, so for me this news ain’t change much thing…
But it’s good to see legal company using torrent, and maybe showing others wich way they should follow.
In other news, the Swedish weather report will available daily from teh pirate bay soon. We encourage everyone to download and archive them because they’ll be of high historic value in a couple thousand years.
Never so proud to be a Canuck.
This effectively removes the argument that all torrents are illegal, and that filesharing is without redemption, to even the stupidest, most ‘tarded of the naysayers.
Now all the CBC needs is decent programming. They should take all the idiot money for CanCon crap and plow it into this and evelopment of decent shows regardless of Canadian Content. Then they’d finally be worth something to the average brain-possessing individual.
[quote comment="314137"][quote comment="314089"]
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 in the course of saving all that money, make sure as many people as possible are able to download, what has to be a tongue-in-cheek jab at the administration who cut their funding. hehe
this is good news
way to go canada!
“CTV has as much independence as their owners at Bell Media allow them, notatallthankyouverymuch. You might as well watch CNN or FOX news. IMO you will find no better newscast than The National with Peter Mansbridge. Excellent world coverage and fair regional representation in the coverage of the political especially. Pure CBC Gold.”
“CTV has as much independence as their owners at Bell Media allow them, notatallthankyouverymuch. You might as well watch CNN or FOX news. IMO you will find no better newscast than The National with Peter Mansbridge. Excellent world coverage and fair regional representation in the coverage of the political especially. Pure CBC Gold.”
Hey hiro81 here is a example of you’re “Pure CBC Gold” bowing to Chinese communist regime pressure http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/worldbusiness/09broadcast.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Looks like the Communist Broadcasting Centre (aka CBC) will finally have to adapt.
Too slow. The pirates will have it out before they do.
CBC has produced nothing but terrible shows, and hasn’t done anything good since Kids in the Hall.
What they need to do is fire all the old people and yuppies who work there, and hire a new staff of kids under 25.
For those who have never seen it, the CBC is particularly unwatchable. They come up with aweful original programming that ends up with about a half dozen viewers in the whole country.
BUT, because the network is operated by politicians and their corporate cronies, it is kept on life-support at the taxpayers expense.
When I was a kid, I lived in Windsor, Ontario, and NOBODY in this city would watch shitty Canadian TV, because even with crappy rabbit ears, you could pick up a good dozen or so real TV stations from the US.
CBC is to TV as NPR is to radio.
And btw this show they want to put online will probably get a whole 5 viewers a month. Just go over to cbc.ca and look at the garbage dump. They’re lucky to still have Hockey Night in Canada. And even that sucks ass (hockey is soooooo lame, Canuk equiv of Americunt Idol.) I hope Don Cherry dies while hosting that lame show.
P.S. the web master of this place needs to fix their fucking CMS so it doesn’t complain about comments being posted too quickly.
BTW as a few previous commentors have noted, the CBC is a TOTAL PROPAGANDA OUTLET run by media-whores that would make Fox-news jealous.
Their radio stations do nothing all day but tell you how great Afghanistan is now that our brave kill-bots are there to murder anyone who looks at them cock-eyed.
Their newscasts are similarly biased.
One thing you’ll never hear them talk about is the brutal regime running China and harvesting organs of dissenters. In fact, they’ve been caught actively censoring these uncomfortable truths. All it takes is a politician to call and it’s ‘taken care of.’
They did a 9/11 truth hit-piece a year or so back that was so obviously crafted for political purposes it made me want to vomit in terror.
The CBC really should be fully privatized so it can die a quick death.
What a f*** s*** are they distributing there?
First I thought it might be some kind of comedy series ….
… but no!
It’s some kind of political “casting” mesh up.
What the fuck do they try to waste our time with now?
Not enough wannebe superstars?
Not enough wannabe supermodels?
Do they realy have to add wannabe “superpoliticians” now?
Are they serious or just media morons?
Why on earth should anybody ever want to look at “wannabe popular at any cost” people who are so media horny they are even willing to molest viewers with their pathetic opinions on how to build a better world?
Does politics really have to become so crappy that it’s meassured in TV popularity of media whores?
(Doesn’t it already enough?)
I wouldn’t even waste a single bit of my bandwidth or storage capacity for this crap!
CBC: share some real (valuable) entertainment or information program!
Not this disgusting crap of most idiotic production ever!
Idiots!
(@ TORRENTFREAK : What are the download rates for casting shows on Bittorrent in general? Can they measure up to popular TV shows (stargate, heroes, lost? That would be nice to know)
I only hope this crap flops on the Bittorrent network completely!
(i.e. Bittorrent users are smarter then those watching these CBC crap production on traditional TV - if anybody does at all!)
who cares what cbc are giving for free. here’s why it’s goood:
my isp: stop using bit torrent,it’s illegal/unfair use of our bandwidth.
me: no,it’s not.it’s just cbc….see.
Sadly, one of Canada’s major ISPs, Rogers, is effectively blocking Bittorrent (and encrypted) traffic.
Hopefully more legitimate uses of Bittorrent like this one pop up and force these ISPs to stop hiding behind their “it’s illegal” excuse to shape their network traffic.
Wait, it’s not gonna be fun to download stuff via. BT if it’s legal…
If they are commercial,we can just remove them and repost a torrent with out it.Similar to the harry potter book leak.
> The benefit of BitTorrent is of course that it will reduce distribution costs.
Sure. But the total costs remain the same or go up. The difference will be paid by our internet connections. That’s basically a flat rate for culture through the back door.
This concept first needs to be discussed publicly.
“This effectively removes the argument that all torrents are illegal”
Nah, it just changes it to “all torrents SHOULD be illegal”.
The CBC has a lot of quality programming. The comedy stuff like 22 Minutes, Rick Mercer, Just for Laughs. Plus their news and sports coverage is great, as are shows like Marketplace.
[quote comment="314590"]For those who have never seen it, the CBC is particularly unwatchable. They come up with awful original programming that ends up with about a half dozen viewers in the whole country.
[/quote]
Hey! That’s not fair! Okay, a lot of the programming on CBC is really boring. Its national or international news, or its biographical or scientific or geographic or economic documentaries, or its professional reports and commentators for major and often otherwise COMPLETELY unreported world events - in other words, CBC programming is INTELLIGENT! Its not FUN, its USEFUL; its the only thing remotely close to an awareness of the rest of the world and current/recent-historical world conditions any Canadians have!!!
Its boring because its content is neither fluff nor eye candy, but rather professional journalism, and it puts every other major news outlet (Global, which only talks about how many people got shot in Toronto today, CTV, which only talks about how the kids at St. Mary’s highschool put on a great science fair vs. CBC, which traverses the latest famine in North Korea, the genocide currently happening in Kenya, the brutal crackdown on protesting Tibetian monks, the latest violation of NAFTA by the states, and the results of the parliamentary elections in Germany).
Honest to God, I love fluff - B5, Futurama, Alias, House - great work, really fun to watch, really pleasant and enjoyable - but a completely different animal!
[quote comment="314596"]BTW as a few previous commentors have noted, the CBC is a TOTAL PROPAGANDA OUTLET run by media-whores that would make Fox-news jealous.
One thing you’ll never hear them talk about is the brutal regime running China and harvesting organs of dissenters. In fact, they’ve been caught actively censoring these uncomfortable truths.[/quote]
I don’t know, I haven’t watched for a while, but when I do, they consistently report the news fairly, accurately, and with a minimum of censorship; bear in mind, while they report the news, they don’t go out of their way to pull the tiger’s tail!
I can see this as a great way for the beginning of legal torrents, because its hazy whether providing entertainment to Canadian citizens should be part of the CBC’s mission, providing impartial news/docs/etc + citizen-centric material like “Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister” is definitely within the realm of CBC’s “duty” to the taxpayers, and therefore the use of low-cost transmission methods IS fully justified end-to-end, rightful-creation to rightful-distribution; moral and legal from a->zed:)
too bad can’t do with scripted shows cuz actors/writers/directors have to get paid but maybe hope for low monthly fee with unlimited downloads for all shows
This is a good start. But…. the Conservative government, a pack of Bush ass-kisers still want to bring in a law that makes the US laws look like the recoding companies are Santa Clause. This isn’t over until we kill all the Conservatives. They are nothing but right-wing religious zealots.
Visit this too!
http://pluking.blogspot.com/
That is why Canada rocks!
maybe if they dont make us download a ‘fagged up’ bitrorrent client ill be more than happy to download it
The torrent is up!
http://www.cbc.ca/nextprimeminister/blog/2008/03/download_canadas_next_great_pr.html
Thank you for letting us know about this.
And thanks to Guinevere for posting the link to the site.
I have just spent the last few hours trying to spread the word out. We as a whole community needs to support this, Canadian or not.
This could be just the start of the revolution we’ve been looking for.
how do you get this stuff man as i want prison break free
12 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.