Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on February 03, 2009TV shows are by far the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Every week we take a look at the most downloaded TV-Shows on BitTorrent. Lost is traditionally one of the most downloaded TV shows. Last year, it got the honor of being the most pirated show of 2008, and it is now leading the TV-download chart for the second week in a row
The data for the most recent TV episodes are collected by TorrentFreak. We use 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.
Top Downloads (Recent Episodes)
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show | |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Lost | |
| 2 | (2) | House M.D. | |
| 3 | (3) | 24 | |
| 4 | (…) | Smallville | |
| 5 | (5) | Battlestar Galactica | |
| 6 | (6) | Fringe | |
| 7 | (…) | The Simpsons | |
| 8 | (…) | Scrubs | |
| 9 | (…) | Supernatural | |
| 10 | (…) | Knight Rider | |
Top Downloads (All Episodes)
| Ranking | (last week) | TV-show | |
|---|---|---|---|
| showinsider.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Heroes | |
| 2 | (3) | Lost | |
| 3 | (2) | Prison Break | |
| 4 | (6) | Gossip Girl | |
| 5 | (7) | House M.D. | |
| 6 | (12) | 24 | |
| 7 | (4) | Dexter | |
| 8 | (5) | Desperate Housewives | |
| 9 | (10) | How I Met Your Mother | |
| 10 | (9) | Grey’s Anatomy | |
Previously: Get Into 200+ Private BitTorrent Sites
Next: One in Three Broadband Subscribers is a Pirate
26 Responses
it´s all crap.
Knight Rider is in the top 10? really??
Think i might just stop with all the tv period, this is sad.
God, it is annoying when people come out and say everything on that list is crap. Maybe go and see one of them?
But I have to agree, some of the shows up there are really losing it.
Anyway, great list TF.
Did anyone see the halftime show on ABC called Wipeout?
Check that show out if you like the japanese show called MXC. Its alot better (and in english) and its hilarious as shit.
WipeOut!
what the hell happened to the comments?
Lost and House are excellent shows and deserve the top spots in my opinion.
Wow, one episode bumped Heroes above Lost in the total downloads?
Good work,Torrentfreak. Something which might help a lot of wannabe TV show directors to understand the taste of a major community(the whole wide world) and produce the zeitgeist shows. It also kinda helps in giving the shows which lie below the list to get a reality check and steer the show in a more interesting manner to get a wider audience.Though in my country i probably get to watch these seasons after a year.But , because of EZTV i get to satisfy my curiosity earlier and i became a fan of whole lot of TV shows, and i still watch those in my TV(i watched Prison Break season 1 and 3, 3 times)
P.S. btw wat happened to the intensedebate comment system.Did u guys stop it due to spams.I thought it was better,could have heard a lot of views of people on the issues.Hope you bring it back
TorrentFreak, You should mabey consider making it the “top 20 most downloaded tv shows”
That way you can show people the lesser known good tv shows. Like the Us Office. Damn the last episode of that was funny.
#10 Agreed, I laughed my ass with Dwight’s fire drill.
@9 Common man et everyone
I don’t know about everyone else, but I personally like these old comments better, because, in my humble opinion, I think that having usernames and reputation points throws the focus of the comments off of the articles and onto the commentators instead – that the comments become about the commentators rather than their views – although everyone else seems to like it, and if that is so, then I guess I am the exception.
As for these lists, perhaps it may be good to make the data available to the public?
@12 http://www.10ch.org
I agree, with the old comments came the endless replies chains and the fool called “Roze” who was like a filesharing extremest and spam commented each article over 9000 times, and whose reputation was huge, even though the arguments he made were frankly amateurish and only posted to keep his overinflated reputation high. Even put me off reading comments to know that he was there, lurking.
yeah i agree but the reply button was the best.
this shit sux.. i say kill the rep points and usernames and just bring back the reply button.
@13 Feb 03, 2009 at 22:44
For me, linear comments are easier to keep up with, since it is impossible to follow busy threaded discussions otherwise without scrolling all over the page and keeping track of how many replies were where. Threaded comments also makes the erroneous assumption that nobody ever replies to two comments at the same time; threads in threaded comments are forced to stay separate, after all, and they can only diverge, rather than merge. In my opinion, threading is best left to sewing machines.
I would watch house on hulu if it weren’t for that pesky 8 day delay bs.
Ach, I don’t like any of those shows. And yes, I attempted to watch some of them…
This comment system sucks, TF.
would have thought Doctor Who would be in there.hmmmm
Well, when you consider that a significant chunk of that audience can download legally via iPlayer, and that a British Show with an American audience is a lot smaller than an American Show with a British Audience, it’s not that surprising Doctor Who’s not on the list.
Wish the Middleman was, though.
As the ad’s are cut from most of these torrents, I think we are going to see a lot more product placements.
So the rest of the world doesn’t make TV shows? I’m pretty sure Top Gear would come close to beating any of these
Battlestar is still on the top 10? The last season ended almost a half year ago!! Its a testament as to how great that show is… Can’t wait for the next season!
wait a second… How is it that Top Gear didn’t make the list? The international audience of that show is huge and its almost all pirated.
@Jeff
Because Top Gear has been off the air since last year.
how come doctor who is not in the list?
@24 Cause no sane person outside UK watches that shit!
good write-up. As for me I have to place Prison Break in the #1 spot. Best show I have watched in many years.???
6 references to this post
Responses are closed
All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.