Jericho Season 2 Leaks on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on January 13, 2008The first three episodes of CBS’s TV-series “Jericho” have leaked to BitTorrent a month before its official premiere date. The popular show was initially canceled last year, but after several protests from angry fans CBS decided to revive it. Nuts!
To most fans it came as quite a shock when CBS announced the cancellation of Jericho March last year. The show had a huge fanbase, and several blogs and communities organized protests to revive the show.
Jeff Braverman, one of the most loyal fans, even went as far as dumping 5,000 pounds of nuts at the CBS offices in New York. CBS’s Vice President of Communications, Chris Ender said that the Jericho protests were the biggest they’d ever seen: “It’s been an impressive display of passion from a loyal audience. You have to tip your hat to their ability to get attention and make some noise.”
Initially CBS, who donated the nuts to charities, wasn’t planning on reviving the show, but after more fans went nuts they eventually did. The official premiere date of the second season was set for February 12, 2008, but today, several weeks before the planned return, the first three episodes of season 2 (ripped from a promotional DVDscreener) are already uploaded to several BitTorrent sites. Perhaps the recent leaks are a gift to the dedicated fans of the show?
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that TV-shows were leaked on purpose. Last fall an unusually large number of pre-air TV shows appeared on BitTorrent sites, in some cases several months before their scheduled air dates. Many of those leaks appear to be inside jobs, and TV executives are starting to realize that leaking shows to BitTorrent can help promote them.
Whether Jericho was leaked on purpose remains unclear, but I guess the thousands of fans who already downloaded the show today don’t really care where it came from.
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75 Responses
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Dear “Mookey”: This is #12 speaking. My guess is that I’ve been in the media longer than you’ve been alive. I have no need of your lecture, or the tutorial from anyone-can-write-it Wikipedia, one of the Internet’s great sources of misinformation (although they did get Nielsen more or less correct).
My point is this. Watch the damn network. If people don’t watch the network, there won’t be one. Then there will be no more shows (except on cable). And then you’ll have bad homemade YouTube videos for your torrents. Put that in your pipe and smoke it while you’re illegally downloading “Jericho.”
@17
Those “silly sub plots” as you call them are required for most episodic television these days. You can thank “The X Files” and similar series for bringing that delightful idea known as the “story arc” to American television and which now pervades almost every TV series. Even police procedurals like “CSI” and “Law and Order” have them.
Gone are the days of shows like “Gunsmoke” where they seemed to film the same exact script, with minor variations, over and over - just using different actors on the same set with the same costumes. Oh for the days of plots without any character development! We had to wait more than 20 years to see Marshall Dillon kiss Kitty. Now that’s what I call television!
Maybe good to tell next time what the series are about?, or an imdb links?
click the link for jericho in the article to view the wiki on the series if you want to know what its about
Brilliant episodes, 1,2,3.
The story is getting better and better..amazing series
deliberately leaked of course, but they now know from the comments on sites that this series is 2nd series is f’ing awesome…shame we have to wait a little longer for the 4 ep..
Neo
@26:
Sorry, but I’m not going to watch a show on a network for the sole purpose of keeping it alive when there is a superior distribution method available. Neither will I purchase a CRT monitor for my computer to keep Company X who refused to move on to LCD technology “alive.”
@31 <3 0wn3d!
I have started watching episode 2.1 and it is garbage….
absolute garbage….
it feels like a daytime soap…….
it looks like a daytime soap….
it sounds like a daytime soap….
whoever is involved in this has taken a great show and turned it to crap.
@31 : sure there is a superior distribution method available… but if the show dies, your “superior distribution method” will be useless as there will be nothing to download.
I think we all here agree that we should download those episodes now that they are out there.
But if we like the show we should also buy the DVDs and do our best to get the ratings up as it is the ONLY way to give the show a third season so we can have something to download every week.
Hunt down those Nielsen families, then.
[quote comment="262589"]This is #12 speaking. My guess is that I’ve been in the media longer than you’ve been alive.[/quote]
Then I’m sure you do understand that it makes no difference whether *I* and probably most of the users of TorrentFreak download it or watch it on TV.
We are not Nielsen familes.
If you really want to make a difference, hunt down a Nielsen family, take them hostage and make THEM watch it.
~ Kiran
I sure hope it sticks around this time. Where the hell are these Nielsen families anyway? I think we should just force them to watch what we want them to.
I’m amazed at some of the responses on this thread. CBS spends $20M on seven new episodes of Jericho, the production company and crew work long and hard hours to make them, and some of you behave like spoiled brats who think this is one big candy store where you get to take whatever you want for free.
Go ahead, download the torrents and don’t watch the network. And in a few years, when you have nothing to download but “Jackass,” I’ll gladly say I told you so and laugh at your shortsightedness.
P.S. The leak of these episodes and their subsequent uploads and downloads on various sites are both illegal and in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws, and believe me, CBS Legal is very much aware of it. Enjoy your fun while you can, children.
commercials are fine, but i never ever never not in my life ever am gonna buy any product seen on tv. there is nothing advertised that i need anyway.
Ugh. I’ve been known to download a few torrents in my time, but I refuse to watch the Jericho torrents, as tempting as they are. The show’s teetering on the edge right now and I really don’t see this helping, even though it doesn’t really affect the Nielsen ratings much.
[quote comment="262943"]I’m amazed at some of the responses on this thread. CBS spends $20M on seven new episodes of Jericho, the production company and crew work long and hard hours to make them, and some of you behave like spoiled brats who think this is one big candy store where you get to take whatever you want for free.
Go ahead, download the torrents and don’t watch the network. And in a few years, when you have nothing to download but “Jackass,” I’ll gladly say I told you so and laugh at your shortsightedness.
P.S. The leak of these episodes and their subsequent uploads and downloads on various sites are both illegal and in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws, and believe me, CBS Legal is very much aware of it. Enjoy your fun while you can, children.[/quote]
Did you ever stop and think that this may actually help promote the show. I never watched an episode of Jericho until yesterday when I heard about the leak so I started watching it from season 1 and I love the show so far. See they got a new viewer already from the leak.
As repeated many times already, unless you are a Nielsen family it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if you watch the network or a torrent.
The only contribution you can make is to buy the DVD.
Actually, if you have digital cable, tivo, replaytv, etc you’re counted just like those Nielsen families… so tune in, record and watch!
Umm, nope Geoff, you are not counted just like the Nielsen families. Only Nielsens and their DVRs are counted. Digital cable and DVRs have the capability to count us through the cable companies, but the Networks and advertisers still rely on just Nielen numbers.
The only non-Nielsen counting that the networks even consider are how many hits they get on their websites, so if you would like to be counted, stream the episodes online.
[quote comment="263094"][quote comment="262943"]I’m amazed at some of the responses on this thread. CBS spends $20M on seven new episodes of Jericho, the production company and crew work long and hard hours to make them, and some of you behave like spoiled brats who think this is one big candy store where you get to take whatever you want for free.
Go ahead, download the torrents and don’t watch the network. And in a few years, when you have nothing to download but “Jackass,” I’ll gladly say I told you so and laugh at your shortsightedness.
P.S. The leak of these episodes and their subsequent uploads and downloads on various sites are both illegal and in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws, and believe me, CBS Legal is very much aware of it. Enjoy your fun while you can, children.[/quote]
Did you ever stop and think that this may actually help promote the show. I never watched an episode of Jericho until yesterday when I heard about the leak so I started watching it from season 1 and I love the show so far. See they got a new viewer already from the leak.[/quote]
Lol, but are they making any money off of you? Because otherwise, the production powerhouses are not, I would think, very impressed :)
Come to mention it, there is another issue here. The TV show is born on the network, it lives off the ratings, and it dies on the whim of a production exec;
Just a couple of hours ago, I was mourning Dark Angel, Firefly, and Over There; excellent shows, with pretty big and extremely strong fan bases and great critical reviews, which were axed long LONG before their time (think after only one or two seasons).
Sure, a show can only go so long - say, five seasons or so - before it finishes its story, and has to be let down for the next show / story; but the cancellations of these (and many other!) shows is just horribly sad and disappointing.
But how do we keep 1) shows we like alive, 2) their creators and contributors paid and happy, and 3) the torrent / p2p pipelines filled?
Two ways: first, Neilson Ratings should accept “Save-Our-Show” correspondence, and count it as, say, four times more valuable then their set-top boxes and their tv-diaries [because obviously, someone who cares enough to write a snail-mail letter and send it in, is a lot more passionate then someone who comes home from work, turns on the tv, and goes to make dinner). This would help solidify selling the airtime to advertisers: “Normal methods indicate x thousand viewers, additionally, there are x thousand devotees outside of our normal measuring index.”
Next, is cold hard cash. The rest of us non-Neilson-approved households can’t send very many real-time messages to TV show producers and creators, n’est pas? However, if there were a way for fans, having discovered a currently-running show they like, to go to the shows website and pre-order that season on DVD, then that would be a HELL of a consumer message! I mean, hell, I’ve seen a season of Dark Angel for ~$20 at Walmart etc, but if paying twice that for the current season meant that the show wouldn’t be cancelled, I’d gladly pay $40!
That way, the creators and contributors to the show would know:
a) There is a definite fan base.
b) The fan base is willing to pay cold hard cash for the show to continue; and
c) that IN ADDITION to the advertising revenues they make (which are worth more because the advertisers know that they are reaching the Neilson numbers PLUS the previously-uncounted fans); in addition to that increased ad revenue, they are offsetting the cost from public sponsors! Even (300,000 fans X 40 a current box set) = 12 million dollars extra a season would sure-hell help compensate for the ad revenue “lost” for not switching to some more mindless reality TV show they _think_ would be more consumed by the mind-numbed public!
Incidently, there’s 300 million people in North America alone; then if you factor in the overseas audience of 300-700+ million people, then even a percentile-fraction of those viewers paying $20-40 for the season is a big market.
So big, I would think, that even if the current studio decided to drop it, there would be incentive for some other studio to pick it up (networks can only produce enough programming to fill seven evenings worth of telly; can’t fit two hours worth into one! so it would make sense to outsource extra/niche TV shows to outside channels).
My two cents. Peace.
[quote comment="263329"][quote comment="263094"][quote comment="262943"]I’m amazed at some of the responses on this thread. CBS spends $20M on seven new episodes of Jericho, the production company and crew work long and hard hours to make them, and some of you behave like spoiled brats who think this is one big candy store where you get to take whatever you want for free.
Go ahead, download the torrents and don’t watch the network. And in a few years, when you have nothing to download but “Jackass,” I’ll gladly say I told you so and laugh at your shortsightedness.
P.S. The leak of these episodes and their subsequent uploads and downloads on various sites are both illegal and in violation of U.S. and international copyright laws, and believe me, CBS Legal is very much aware of it. Enjoy your fun while you can, children.[/quote]
Did you ever stop and think that this may actually help promote the show. I never watched an episode of Jericho until yesterday when I heard about the leak so I started watching it from season 1 and I love the show so far. See they got a new viewer already from the leak.[/quote]
Lol, but are they making any money off of you? Because otherwise, the production powerhouses are not, I would think, very impressed :)[/quote]
Actually they make money off of me. My satellite bill is over $100/month and I know the networks get a piece of it and if I like the show I usually buy the DVDs so there is more money. So what if I download a show that I missed. If it wasn’t for torrents I would have never watched Heroes, Lost and Battlestar Galactica.
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