‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ season 5, ‘Dexter’ part of most-pirated list
For anyone who is knowledgeable of the TV industry, it’s pretty universally-agreed upon that piracy can be a pretty bad thing. It keeps shows from making money they could otherwise make, and thus is one of the biggest challenges facing networks and corporations moving forward to 2013. This is especially true for premium cable shows, which have a large budget and rely on subscriptions and DVD sales to stay afloat more so than advertisers.
With this in mind, we’re not sure that HBO and Showtime have to smile about having two entries in the top five most-pirated shows of 2012 (at least according to TorrentFreak). From one standpoint, it may be flattering to them that there are enough people out there who love their shows to want to download them for free; however, it is still taking away possible revenue. If these two networks could find a way to bring in some of these viewers to watch on their actual networks or by the DVDs, we have a feeling that they would be celebrating Christmas with a massive smile on their face.
We’re going to share the top five shows below, and to us the biggest stunner here is that two of these series actually have more total downloads than they do viewers.
1. “Game of Thrones” – 4.28 million downloads, 4.2 million U.S. viewers
2. “Dexter” – 3.85 million downloads, 2.75 million viewers
3. “The Big Bang Theory” – 3.2 million downloads, 15.82 million viewers
4. “How I Met Your Mother” – 2.96 million downloads, 10.14 million viewers
5. “Breaking Bad” – 2.58 million downloads, 2.98 million viewers
Part of the other problem that we have not mentioned above is that many of these downloads are coming internationally, where these show air at later times than they do in America. The solution to this is something that we have suggested before: either create a network that caters better to international programming supported by commercials or subscriptions, or create an instant on-demand service so that you can monetize your programming instantly. Will piracy still happen? Probably, but not on the same scale, since we don’t know anyone who would prefer to watch a show on a computer when they can afford and would prefer to watch it on TV.
If you want to read some more news pertaining to “Game of Thrones,” you can do so over at the link here.
Photo: HBO