More Than Half of Australia Downloads TV Shows Over BitTorrent
Written by Smaran on December 14, 2006A University of Sydney study has found that 53% of all Australians that were interviewed download TV shows over BitTorrent on a regular basis. The study also found that one in four people download TV shows at least twice a week.
The study was conducted by University of Sydney honours student, Adam Zuchetti. Questionnaires were made available on local TV websites. The survey received an enthusiastic response and almost 800 TV fans took part.
According to Zuchetti, people don’t want to watch TV shows when networks air them, they want to be able to do so on their own time. He says, “people want more ways to access shows.” And since there are already other ways of getting TV shows, people resort to them. “I can now get everything I want from channel BitTorrent, so the commercial networks are going to get what’s coming to them’ — that is typical of what people are saying,” Zuchetti says.
21% of the people questioned said that downloads now make up the bulk of their TV viewing and 53% of them said that they are prepared to pay for content they download. Zuchetti recommends that TV networks give customers 2 options, free downloads of shows with advertising or paid downloads without any ads.
Since these statistics were collected over the past few months, it isn’t surprising that LOST was revealed as the most downloaded show. It was followed by Veronica Mars, House, Prison Break and Dr Who.
According to Free TV Australia, the fact that so many people are downloading TV shows is not affecting network ratings. Viewing levels are on the rise and went up 0.7 this year in Australian cities.
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33 Responses
One day I am gonna finish writing that ode to Veronica Mars. It will rock….
Its known and proven that series have higher numbers of viewers since the people who didn’t get a look on the regular day of air at the TV, now can watch it later and can continue watching.
53% seams a bit much to me. The fact that its on a tv channels web sitewhere only tv enthusiasts will really look is create a bias in the results.
sample size of under 800. Skewed to people already on the internet. Pointless.
Pfft, stupid. You may as well ask people at the airport if they intend to travel in the next six months…good thing it’s just an honours thesis, if this was post-grad research, he’d fail it.
I am deeply skeptical of this study. The sample was self selecting, small and biased. I very much doubt even 1/20th of the population of Australia is even aware of the existence of bittorrent. Still, it does highlight the problem of general incompetence and grade inflation within universities.
BAAAAAAHHAHAHAHAHA
stupid report, the sample audience was too small and too specific to represent Australia.
Only 60% of Australian’s have home internet connection!!! So this report is saying 88% are engaged in downloading TV shows????
BULLSHIT!
I went over the news story again…
“53 per cent of respondents”
How can you interpret that as “53% of Australia”
are you a moron Smaran??? You just made statistics up, and posted to Digg to boost your blog.
I agree with the sceptics above: the study is small, badly sampled and ignores important things like the total number of broadband connections in Australia.
Moreover, this post mis-represents the study as it states that not all of the downloads are illegal. We have legal downloads here in Australia.
“new online study showing 53 per cent of ***respondents*** regularly download TV shows”
Both TorrentFreak and the Digg article have blatantly MISINTERPRETED this study. The study NEVER said “53% of Australians”, it said “respondents”. There’s a world of difference, this wording means the study takes into account the sample bias, i.e. Internet users who are more likely to download TV shows given their technical knowledge. Naturally it’s not representative of all of Australia, just a subset.
@Simon: Unless you’ve got a link to the study, then you can’t actually make those claims, you’re simply going by a one-page summary done by news.com.au. There may have been additional demographic questions that have not been listed, an honours thesis is still pretty big after all.
I would point out though, that Australia has already been recognised as the highest per capita illegal downloader of TV: http://www.cnet.com.au/tvs/0,239035250,240060264,00.htm
Go aussies ;)
The original article is valid (if slightly misleading in the first % stat that goes up).
As far as sample size goes – 800 is perfectly valid. Most election polls are based on considerably less. The hard part is matching the sample frame against who you propose to represent.
What you have in this case is a sample of people on tv sites. So the most that can be claimed is that ‘53% of tv show site visitors download…’
To the credit of the student, this is part of the online market that has had relatively little research done on it – but market sizing is not a strength of the approach (even though it makes for a good headline).
I would be much more interested in using this type of info to work out what types (or specific) shows are being viewed; if there is a difference between ADSL and ADSL 2+ users; how often is it done, are people downloading from work, etc.
[quote comment="29776"]I am deeply skeptical of this study. The sample was self selecting, small and biased. I very much doubt even 1/20th of the population of Australia is even aware of the existence of bittorrent. Still, it does highlight the problem of general incompetence and grade inflation within universities.[/quote]
Actually – not too far from the mark. One of the tracking studies I cover has torrent/p2p application awareness at about 10-12% of the online population (about 7% of the total pop).
Apps like LimeWire have an active base of more than 600,000 Aussies a month.
The aussies love EZTV :]
I am Aussie and I download everything, even Aussie Shows.
I’m an Aussie and I download tv shows :D I’m pretty sure lots of other aussies do so as well, as it’s not that hard to figure out how to set up bittorrent and to download shows… Plus I think it’s funny how people from other countries think Aussies are are less computer literate when Australia has one of the largest IT sectors in the world. (I think it does..)
I completely agree with the reports implications – why wait to watch a show free to air when u can see it live in american time and have no adds and burn it to dvd – its better quality anyway. People who bag this report get to caught up in the stats – the point is still valid, that is why i reckon they released the new season of OC at the same time as America – they lossing a massive chunk of viewers to torrent users – easy to use and good. Allready seen all of lost and heroes – good stuff, the tv companies need to get a clue and catch up or they will get left behind.
Cheers
Ads are getting longer and louder… and it usually takes months to be shown here from the US.
Yep, gotta be careful with those stats people.
Oh, and ONLY 153% of Australians believe John Howard is a wanker! :)
Hey, give the guy a break. There are so many constraints that limit the validity of any honours thesis. Yeah, the sample might be skewed and all the rest of it but you do the best you can in a limited timeframe.His work has clearly sparked discussion and hopefully further research will be undertaken which may wield some more weight with TV networks.
So lets just consider this work a starting point in what will hopefully be a tv revolution in aus. God, we all know its well overdue. And that was probably the motivation for the research in the first place.
Yea i found loads of links on the net
http://oliv3r.net has a good load of free downloads of tv shows
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[quote comment="29814"]Go aussies ;)[/quote]
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