Pirated TV-Shows Popular with Swedes

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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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