On Thursday I wrote about the sudden without-warning restriction of full episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report  being viewed from outside the United States.

I’d figured Foxtel was behind it given they distribute it locally here in Australia and sure enough, the executive producer for the Daily Show has since made a post on the official forums confirming this:

Yesterday, April 28, we restricted access to full episodes of The Daily Show for several countries outside of the U.S. We did so at the request of the content licensees who control the television broadcast rights to the show in those respective territories.


The only legal alternative to watch these two shows in Australia now is to pay Foxtel $66 a month. I’d wager I’m not alone in holding the sentiment that Foxtel can go screw themselves.

Over in the US a video on demand service Hulu has been operating for just over a year now. It offers TV shows and movies (in HD) from Fox, NBC and as of April 30th, 2009, ABC which includes Disney and other distributors.

All three distributors, amongst other partners all have a stake in the company itself and therefore whilst their FTA/Cable platforms might be competing with Hulu, the more successful it becomes the more revenue they receive from it.

Sure it might have taken the US television industry a while to be dragged into the digital age but at least a workable model is out there and being proven to be succesful. Currently Hulu is the 34th most visited site in the US; the demand for a such a product is very real.

So given the huge untapped market potential of such a product, why is it then that in Australia we don’t have anything remotely close to this?

The “industry approved” answer would probably be because ‘Australia don’t have the infrastructure to support it and everybody is waiting for the NBN to be built’.

This is more accurately the “we haven’t started to lose enough money to justify moving from our failed distribution models yet” answer.

Over the last few months I’ve read several articles that seem to pop up randomly indicating that Australian TV networks are bleeding money like they were dying from Ebola.

Ten profit down, staff cut

Seven: profit down, revenue up, share buyback

Then there was the great Aussie Simpsons scare where a rumour circulated that Ten was about to dump the Simpsons because they couldn’t afford the $25,000 an episode. Ten squashed the rumour pretty quickly and the original article was edited within 6 hours of publication.

Unlike the music and movie industry, television networks don’t actually sell a tangible product and instead rely on advertising revenue. Therefore where it is usually frowned upon to assume a download is lost revenue in the movie and music industries, in the television industry it’s not far from the truth.

Advertisers rely on viewership to gauge how much or little they should be paying for advertising. If people aren’t watching the networks FTA and digital offerings then advertising revenue slumps and the networks lose  money.

This is pretty much what’s happening at the moment and stupid decisions to force Australian’s to pirate their favourite tv shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report aren’t helping them. I can guarantee you now nobody who is technologically adept enough to point a browser to the Daily Show website and previously watch a full episode previously for free is going to fork out $66 a month to Foxtel for the same pleasure.

Channel 9 recently lost a long court case where they went after IceTV because IceTV were distributing an Australian program guide that was compatible with PVR boxes that enabled users to skip ads altogether. Currently the official program guides only work on boxes that allow users to fast forward and not completely bypass advertisements.

This agressive action to protect what is a long dated revenue model is a perfect example of the Australian tv networks just not getting what their distribution models are up against.

Australian TV networks aren’t taking huge hits because a minority of people are buying PVR boxes able to bypass ads and are recording their favourite shows with an alternative programme guide. Far more people own an internet connection then an expensive recording device and this is where they are getting thrashed.

Australian TV networks, I’m going to put it plain and simply; this is what you are up against:

Any idiot with a computer being able to set up a BitTorrent client to automatically download a tv show in HD within hours of it being released in the US and then being able to watch it as many times as they want whenever they want ad-free.

The only thing a television network has over this offering is the ability to distribute content on demand at a higher quality. As the Hulu model has shown in the US there is a huge market for this service.

No amount of “all-new Australian cop dramas” starring Rebecca Gibney, Vince Collismo, Claudia Karvan and the usual cast of recycled Australian actors that seem to be in every new show is going to save the current distribution method. It’s simply inconvenient, offers too little and cannot compete with the freedom and variety of online distribution.

I’m not saying Australian television is dead but it’s time to get off your arses and offer Australians a competitive video on demand service. Australian’s aren’t going to go back to the FTA model because of new Australian shows but they will switch to a more convenient distribution method even if it is commercial supported. Get the distribution method right and then use the revenue to create all the recycled theme Australian shows you want.

The business model is there and the market is untapped so whoever takes the plunge is guaranteed an initial 100% market share. The time to start investing in the future of television distrubution is now, not when your company is on the verge of failure.

Personally I haven’t watched an Australian advertisement on television at my house for close to four years now. I watch a ridiculous amount of television each week and until things change am simply dead revenue to Australian broadcasters.

I know I am far from alone in this category but what’s the current alternative? Watching shows three seasons behind shown at inconvenient times or simply not at all because nobody is airing them?

No thanks.

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