The rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent, and this is also reflected in the fact that most downloads occur from countries where the show has yet to air on TV.

Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their own country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Despite massive piracy of TV-shows, there are plenty of opportunities for distributors and broadcasters to win viewers back. The piracy figures simply show that TV viewing habits are changing. There is a huge interest in on-demand TV and there are millions of viewers that can potentially bring in millions of dollars in revenue.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US, based on data from Nielsen. The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all public BitTorrent trackers. All the data is carefully checked and possible inaccuracies are systematically corrected.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2009

Most TV-show downloads come from overseas where the episodes haven’t aired yet, let alone that it can be streamed online. The only option left for these unfortunate souls is to use BitTorrent, or wait.

However, it seems that people don’t want to wait for months when they know that their favorite TV-show is out there, just a few clicks away. Indeed, at an increasing rate people have started to use BitTorrent to get their TV fix.

Traffic to the leading TV-torrent distribution site EZTV is up over 50% compared to last year. The site had more than 15 million visits in September compared to 9.2 a year earlier.

TV-torrents are particularly popular in Australia where most US TV-shows air with a delay of months or even years. EZTV is among the 300 most visited websites Down Under, and Mininova, The Pirate Bay and isoHunt are all in the top 100.

Stopping TV piracy is not that hard though. TV distribution companies should get rid of the long delays and offer streams to people outside of the US. If they can pull that off there is no doubt that the number of ‘pirated’ downloads will plunge.

Below is the list of most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent last week. Heroes is leading the chart with well over a million downloads in just one week.

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Popularity of Pirated TV-Shows Still Rising

Perhaps even more importantly, the rise of unauthorized downloading of TV-shows is a signal that customers want something that is not available through other channels. Availability seems to be the key issue why people turn to BitTorrent.

This also becomes clear when we look at the geographical location of the downloaders. The vast majority of the downloads come from overseas, over 90% on average. Outside the US, fans sometimes have to wait for weeks or even months before the show airs on TV in their country. Many of them are simply not that patient or willing to torture themselves, and turn to BitTorrent in desperation.

Legal online streaming services are only available in the US, and change very little in the overall download figures. Until the availability problem is addressed, we’re not likely to see a decrease in TV-show downloads from BitTorrent. Indeed, compared to last year, the download figures have grown a little, especially for the top three TV-shows in the list.

Below we have compiled a list of the most downloaded TV-shows, together with the viewer average for TV in the US, based on data from Nielsen. Note that the download count for each show is per episode, the most downloaded in this case. The Olympics Opening Ceremony was one of the most wanted broadcasts of the year with 4,620,000 downloads, but we decided only to include TV-series.

The data for the top 10 is collected by TorrentFreak from several sources, including reports from all the large BitTorrent trackers. The download number is the sum of all torrent downloads for the most popular episode. Based on previous experience a correction is made for smaller .torrent releases that we might have missed.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV-Shows of 2008

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. A list of the most pirated TV-shows of 2008, including download count will be published later this week.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Thanks to ShowInsider we now also include a list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

Since both shows are ‘released’ on Tuesday, BitTorrent sites see a significant traffic increase on that day.

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The data presented here is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

The show was downloaded the most in the UK (15%), where the official season opening is scheduled for October 1st. Canada, France and Australia complete the top 5. Although most TV-broadcasters won’t be happy to read these figures, one could argue that BitTorrent has actually helped TV-shows to build a stronger, broader, and more involved fanbase.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak from a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only.

At the end of the year we will publish a list of most downloaded TV-shows for the entire year, like we did last December.

Top Downloads September 21 – September 28

Source: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent

It’s Heroes that breaks all the records though. Our statistics show that, across all BitTorrent sites, the two episodes from Heroes’ season opening were downloaded well over a million times each – in just one day. The vast majority of the downloads come from outside the US (92%), where shows usually air weeks, months or even years later.

The show was downloaded the most in the UK (15%), where the official season opening is scheduled for October 1st. Canada, France and Australia complete the top 5. Although most TV-broadcasters won’t be happy to read these figures, one could argue that BitTorrent has actually helped TV-shows to build a stronger, broader, and more involved fanbase.

Jesse Alexander, the executive producer of ‘Heroes’ told TorrentFreak that he thinks this is indeed the case. “People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality. TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience,” he said.

Let’s hope Alexander will be heard in Hollywood. Below is the TV-show download chart of the past week, Heroes is not included in the list, but it will surely appear in next week’s chart.

Top Downloads September 14 – September 21

Source: ‘Heroes’ Causes BitTorrent Boom

One could argue that their availability on BitTorrent actually helped ‘Lost’ and ‘Heroes’ to build a stronger fanbase. With torrents, no-one has to miss an episode anymore which keeps the fans more engaged. So called “pirates” advertise the shows to their friends, or write about it on their blogs. Accordingly, when we asked Jesse Alexander whether he thinks that BitTorrent might have helped to reach a broader audience, he answered with a clear cut “Yes”.

Not that Jesse wants everybody to get the shows off BitTorrent, but he said that it certainly signals that there is a market for on-demand and interactive TV. “People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality,” Jesse told TorrentFreak. TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience.”

“It’s the same for music artists. The reality is, people share music. Artist now make money by driving people to concerts, through community websites, and by offering exclusive events. TV networks are focusing too much on one exclusive product, instead of building a community. This is a mistake I think.”

The success of Heroes on BitTorrent didn’t pass by the cast of the show unnoticed either. “The cast and the people behind the scenes have all been talking about it,” Jesse said. As an example he mentioned last year’s promotional tour in France, where the actors were recognized by hundreds of fans, even though the show had not even premiered on TV yet.

Alexander has hit the nail on the head. This is in fact one of the main reasons why shows like ‘Heroes’ are so popular on filesharing networks. It can take up to six months after the US premiere before these shows are aired in Europe, Australia and other parts of the world. Jesse agreed that this is indeed one of the major causes of piracy. “This gap is something that is certainly going to change in the future,” he added.

Jesse went on to say that in the near future, thanks to the Internet, the viewers of TV-shows will see more interactive components and alternate realities they can participate in. The future of TV will be more international, with real interaction, and shows will be more and more integrated into the core part of an online community.

When we asked Jesse if he has ever downloaded TV-shows off BitTorrent, he told us: “I can’t confirm or deny, but I’m familiar with all kind of new technologies.” I guess we all know what he’s trying to say.

It is no surprise that Jesse is more positive towards new technologies than some others in the entertainment industry. Last week we reported on the upcoming “Pirate TV” show that he is working on, together with Matt Mason, the author of ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’.

“Matt’s book needs to get a broader audience,” said Jesse. “We want to discuss the negative and the positive side of piracy, and place things in a broader historical context. We want to start a real conversation about the future of intellectual property.”

We’re happy to join the debate, what about you?

Source: ‘Heroes’ Producer Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent

Initially MediaDefender, an anti-piracy organization that has been known to run fake BitTorrent trackers, had plans to use MiiVi.com for their video download site, but those plans were canceled after we posted about it.

It’s great to see that the name “Miivi” is changing into something positive now. The BitTorrent community can use another stable public tracker, especially now TorrentBox and PodTropolis have restricted access to its trackers to block peers in the US.

MiiVi.org describes itself as a tribute to the fall of MediaDefender and was registered by the people behind MegaNova. The Pirate Bay runs tracker.miivi.org which is a public BitTorrent tracker and EZTV uses tv.mivii.org for their TV-show releases.

Isn’t it ironic?

Source: “Heroes” and “Prison Break” Torrents Tracked by MiiVi.org

Currently in Hong Kong promoting the hit TV show ‘Heroes’, actor Masi Oka who plays Hiro Nakamura in the show, made some pro-BitTorrent comments.

According to the International Herald Tribune, the Emmy nominated actor noted that when they went to France recently, the reaction from the fans was very positive as many of them had already seen the show, even before it aired on TV.

Of course, in order to do this the fans didn’t manipulate the space-time continuum like Hiro does in the show, they simply grabbed a .torrent file and downloaded with their favorite client. There’s nothing quite like a free sample to generate interest in your product and this French situation is a shining example of that.

Despite the great reaction in France, Masi commented with care: “It takes a lot of money to create a really high quality show. We have a lot of support from the advertisers … all the buyers. We just feel like we’re doing a disservice to them if we do BitTorrent”

Although Masi Oka is an intelligent man with an IQ of 180 and a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics under his belt, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what he worked out already about BitTorrent promotion: “if we get a lot of people to watch the show” he said, “it’s only going to be great for the show in the future too.”

Oka seems to recognize that true fans of productions such as ‘Heroes’ not only watch the shows via BitTorrent, TV or both, but will likely go out and buy the DVDs too – if the show is any good of course – which ‘Heroes’ definitely is.

“Hopefully, if they can buy the DVD after they watch it on BitTorrent, that would be great” he said.

Perhaps realizing that his bosses at NBC may not appreciate such an influential guy making pro-file sharing comments, Oka added a disclaimer:

“I am not advocating BitTorrent”

No, of course you’re not Masi, we understand!

Source: ‘Heroes’ Star Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent

In an interview we did with Paul Pod, one of the founders of the project, he said that their goal is to create a “Napster moment” for TV downloads.

I don’t know if you remember downloading music before Napster came along, but it was an experience not dissimilar to the BitTorrent experience today. And remember when you tried out Napster for the first time? We’re aiming to create that Napster moment for TV downloads. Web 2.0 is neither here nor there – what matters is good architecture and fantastic design. For non-geeks, it’s all about the user experience – if it sucks they don’t come back.

Last May we were able to give you a sneak peek behind the screens. Over the past months a lot of work has been done to optimize and add features to the site. Some of the new (working) features that are worth mentioning are RSS feeds for your favorite shows, and integration with Amazon and the iTunes store.

iTunes integration

The episode view includes links to downloads from the iTunes store.

Amazon offers

The Show page includes links to DVD’s from the Amazon store.

Download screen & RSS feed for favorites

TIOTI offers RSS feeds for ever show, but also feeds for your favorite shows. This makes it easy to stay up-to-date.

There is no official release date for the public Beta yet, but it won’t take long now.

Source: A “Napster Moment” for TV Downloads