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Pirated TV-Shows Popular with Swedes

Two out of five of Swedes between the age of 16 and 30 watch pirated TV-shows regularly according to a recent report. The delay in airing compared to the US, and the convenience of watching a TV-show whenever you want are two of the main reasons why pirated TV-shows are so popular.

These results come from a report called “Moving Pictures 2007″, which was just released by the Swedish broadcast statistics institute MMS. “This issue is very important for the future of the TV industry and we will continue to follow this development closely” says Pontus Bergdahl, CEO of MMS.

According to the report, Swedish youngsters watch over an hour of downloaded TV-shows every week. Prison Break is the most popular series. 35% of the people who saw Prison Break in the past month indicated that they did not see it on TV but downloaded the episodes via a P2P network.

TV-ratings for the Swedish youngsters have been very stable during the last seven years while other groups have increased their viewing dramaticaly during the last years. This shows that TV-broadcasters are missing out on potential revenue. The figures are probably not limited to Sweden, popular TV-shows are downloaded by hundred thousands of people worldwide every week.

“The Swedish youth will probably continue to download pirated TV-shows unless attractive alternatives are offered to them”, says Sorosh Tavakoli the project leader.

The report also looked into the reasons behind this massive piracy and found that there several reasons why people download TV-shows. Most importantly, people want the freedom to watch a TV-show whenever they want, and wherever they want. Another reason is that they don’t want to wait until their favorite series air on Swedish TV. It is hard for most people to wait that long, especially once they know that they can get it off BitTorrent only a few hours after the show is broadcasted in the US.

High quality on-demand TV is the future, it’s time that TV-producers realize that and take action. It will benefit both the public and the producers on the long run.

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  • mirshafie

    To be able to see the show when and where you want is important, aswell as to get them soon after they air. Two other major reasons that I see are that there are no commercial interruptions in the middle of the show, and that you can get much better video quality if you wish. (HDTV broadcasts are still very rare in Sweden.)

    Unfortunately the entire industry, as a whole, are dumbstruck by the advancement of technology. Ten years back people were outraged that about 70% of the post offices in Sweden were shut down because of e-mail and electronic money transactions, and ten years from now other businesses will have to shut down too.

    The sad part isn’t really that lots of middle aged women that worked in those post offices lost their jobs. Work is not fun. Work is SUPPOSED to be something necessary, something that we absolutely have to do to survive eventhough it sucks. Well evidently lots of people acutally DO NOT NEED to work. As a whole, we could get wealthier year after year, and still work less. But instead some people lose their jobs and pay completely, while others have to work harder to keep their jobs. (And let’s not forget about those little bastards who actually benefit from all this. :) )

    Sorry for going off topic, but these things bug me.

  • kb

    a good article with good reason . for me the reason that I download or watch on youtube for tv series is also because it offer freedom to watch whenever I like .

    in past i used to subscribe cable tv .but due to my unstable working time , I usually miss alot show . as you can guess, why would I paid but still have such restriction .

    to be short it is time for tv station to change the way of they do business and aim for global users need.

  • Camille

    I download tv shows like House, LOST and Heroes because I don’t want to wait a whole year before seeing it on french tv and even more important I don’t want to see a censored show and a show poorly dubbed in french. If I have to illegally download files for this, well I’m not ashamed.

  • bob blob

    if u already have paid for cable TV then IMHO it is not piracy FFS!
    your choosing when to watch the show AND have choosen to watch it without the hassel of commercials.
    if you have paid for cable TV then already a portion of your fees go towards the production companies SO WHATS THE BIG DEAL??!!

  • Daniel Bergman

    Well, I most totaly agree with this.
    Here in sweden we dont have that much of a choice when it comes to TV.

    For example take all these Anime downloaders. Why do you think swedish ppl download for example the top dl’s in sweden; Naruto, and Bleach?
    Isnt obvious?
    We dont get any non dubed anime here.If we get it its around 10 years old.

    I personally love bleach and death note and tried recent to get ahold of the entire death note serie. I checked every singel store that said they sold anime and no luck there. Went to the officall international realesers of the Death note serie. Well, tried to buy it but they didnt ship their movies oversea. Due to something regarding regional codes. And well, only ones able to order it from em was us residents and Canadians.

    Well, its the same thing with the ordinary tv shows… how fun is it to watch 2 year old letterman shows..? come on.

    Something really needs to be done becouse the reason for ppl filesharing isnt that they cant afford it, its becouse of 75% of the media we want to see isnt vieable without doing a crime. Sad but true. And Distributers really need to do something rather soon.

    If i for example would have the access to all the media i wanted.
    I would buy it. I meen… after the first episode of for example bleach/naruto/all the series iv seen i was hooked and if i had some way to get ahold of those items by any meen of legal action like buying it in a store or having a channel i could add to my box i would soo have it by now.
    Note that i have some channels with naruto, and other animes and japanese movies/series. But who wants a crapy swedish dub/sub that isnt even correctly translated..
    For going from japanese to us english then translated to english and then translated to swedish results in total freaking failure :P
    And add the profanity filter for younger audience… o m f g.

    More media accessible to the ppl!!!

    Peace!

  • mined.se

    i love that some channnels here in sweden, perhaps some other coutries aswell, have episodes on their website. episodes for their productions, but still very nice.

  • Google

    I Think,Ä°t is very nice information…

    Hitchhiker Nation

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