Piracy is always a topic that is front of mind and we as Australians are one of the biggest piraters in the world. In fact, Australians counted for around 12% of pirates for Game of Thrones Season 4, not bad for a country with only 23 million people. But the question is, does this piracy have an effect on free to air and pay TV advertising?
The answer is simple. YES! These shows that are downloaded are ad-free and straight from America, so even if there were ads they would not relate to Australian content anyway. It doesn’t take much to figure out that if we are not watching these shows on television, then peopl
e aren’t advertising on these shows and there is a lack of money generated. Most people probably aren’t too fussed about missing out on watching ads as this is when we stretch our legs, look away from the TV and go to the toilet, but the big question is – how do we minimise the lack of income from advertising loss?
It’s not a quick fix (unfortunately for the television and radio stations – we’ll get to radio in the next blog), but television, especially free to air, needs to change its way of thinking. I too would much rather download a recent episode of The Walking Dead than wait an extra year for it to be played on local TV. Fast tracking is something that needs to be used more and more for local stations (pay TV are already well ahead in this field). Another major gripe of mine that sways me to watch downloaded material is the quality of the picture. Free to air needs to jump on board the HD bandwagon. Why watch a standard definition picture with advertising when you can download an HD version for free?
There are many things that television needs to change in order to recapture the lost market and it needs to happen quickly as technology (and internet speeds) are not going to slow down anytime soon. As well as this, Australia is now embracing the streaming revolution, another headache for television, but we’ll cover this in the next blog.