Those deals do sometimes exist, but they are very risky for the broadcaster. Suppose a channel buys a show for a price that's three times larger than what they end up making from it - say the show costs £100k an episode (£2.2m a season), and the show only brings in £35k an episode in ad revenue. That means that each year, the channel will make a £1.4m loss. Now, suppose that the show is reasonably successful in the US - that means that it could run for ten seasons, and the UK broadcaster has to buy it each year, knowing that they'll lose over a million pounds a year. They could have used that money to buy something else, maybe a show that would make money.
If you were running a business, would you enter an agreement with a supplier that basically said you had to buy their product as long as they continued making it, with no opportunity to back out if it didn't sell for you?
I guess, probably just as well I don't run a business then. It just seems there must be a solution out there somewhere whereby fans don't lose out just for living in UK. I begrudge having to buy boxsets when I subscribe to both sky and Netflix and still cant watch the shows I like!
I guess, probably just as well I don't run a business then. It just seems there must be a solution out there somewhere whereby fans don't lose out just for living in UK. I begrudge having to buy boxsets when I subscribe to both sky and Netflix and still cant watch the shows I like!
A lot of the time, if it doesn't air on TV, they won't release the boxset, because they don't want to affect the chances of selling it to a TV broadcaster...
Perhaps when these channels purchase shows it should be in their agreement to show them until they are cancelled by the producers of the show (CW, ABC etc) rather than on a season by season basis. I think its a massive slap in the face to fans in particular of Supernatural who have watched it for almost ten years despite crazy scheduling and very little promotion by Living for them to discard it. Well I don't have a reason to watch Living now, so there you go! or Really (Hart of Dixie).
the issue of outbidding has gone on before Sky took over, I am still bitter about the fact that Channel 5 "stole" my beloved Dawsons Creek from C4 and at the time our reception signal was crap so was hard to watch it and also the time it was on would change from week to week so I never knew when it was going to be on and as a result have never seen the full final season (I had to buy the 2 hour finale on dvd from Amazon). and bloomin Jensen Ackles was in it as well!
You say you haven't seen the final season of Dawsons Creek why have you not just bought it on DVD? If you had known earlier that season was just being shown on Sony tv!
I guess, probably just as well I don't run a business then. It just seems there must be a solution out there somewhere whereby fans don't lose out just for living in UK. I begrudge having to buy boxsets when I subscribe to both sky and Netflix and still cant watch the shows I like!
I don't disagree, but I just think that broadcasters often get the blame when it isn't really their fault. A lot of the time it is because the studio has an unrealistic view on how much a programme should be worth, and they won't budge on it because doing so might create a ripple effect on the price of everything else.
I agree there has to be a solution, and I think long term it will be a combination of the SVOD providers buying more shows and studios being more flexible on price points.
You say you haven't seen the final season of Dawsons Creek why have you not just bought it on DVD? If you had known earlier that season was just being shown on Sony tv!
I did try and catch in on Sony tv but for some absolutely bizarre reason it cut out at the point where pacey works for some fancy broker firm and jen had taken Jensen (cant remember his characters name) to a party where joey was being an absolute ********. it was a while ago though so don't know if it re-started more recently? anyway, like I said I had seen bits and pieces of the season and bought the finale special on dvd so didn't think there was much point in forking out for dvd. but point was that broadcasters messed it up and took it from a channel where it had a great home. who didn't love Dermot's catch up summaries!? ah, T4.
and while we are on the subject, anyone remember how BBC2 nearly killed Buffy over here when they would take it off for the bloomin snooker for weeks on end. at the time I didn't have sky although my friend did and he was a whole season ahead and kept saying oh, willows a witch now and going out with a werewolf and I was like eh?
and while we are on the subject, anyone remember how BBC2 nearly killed Buffy over here when they would take it off for the bloomin snooker for weeks on end. at the time I didn't have sky although my friend did and he was a whole season ahead and kept saying oh, willows a witch now and going out with a werewolf and I was like eh?
I do remember that, and there was really no excuse, other than the fact that BBC2 has to show the snooker. There's a broader problem with the BBC, which is that while they do buy US shows, it's not really part of their remit as a public service broadcaster (compared with, say, showing UK sport or UK news). So they didn't really care about the fact that they would be dropping the show for weeks on end. A commercial broadcaster would probably have planned it more carefully, but the BBC basically said "who cares?"
I do remember that, and there was really no excuse, other than the fact that BBC2 has to show the snooker. There's a broader problem with the BBC, which is that while they do buy US shows, it's not really part of their remit as a public service broadcaster (compared with, say, showing UK sport or UK news). So they didn't really care about the fact that they would be dropping the show for weeks on end. A commercial broadcaster would probably have planned it more carefully, but the BBC basically said "who cares?"
also used to love that BB2 and C4 would show US shows on at 6pm on a weeknight, (Blossom/all American Girl/Boy Meets World/Fresh Prince) shame they don't do that now and all you get is endless Hollyoaks/Simpsons/I don't even know what's on BBC2 anymore! But im probably getting way off topic here.
also used to love that BB2 and C4 would show US shows on at 6pm on a weeknight, (Blossom/all American Girl/Boy Meets World/Fresh Prince) shame they don't do that now and all you get is endless Hollyoaks/Simpsons/I don't even know what's on BBC2 anymore! But im probably getting way off topic here.
That's due to competition though. In the early 90s, there were only four channels (hardly anyone had Sky back then), and at 6pm both BBC1 and ITV had news on. So there were enough teenagers and young adults around that both BBC2 and Channel 4 could air ropey American sitcoms or "yoof" programming. But once more people started to get multichannel, and once Friends kickstarted the explosion in US sitcoms, every other satellite channel was showing them, and Channel 4 could no longer get away with showing A Different World or Blossom.
I mean, if you remember, it wasn't just contemporary classics like Fresh Prince. BBC2 used to show the original Star Trek at 6pm, and Channel 4 used to have Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Once American television started becoming much more prevalent on British television, terrestrial channels could no longer afford to show cheap, old series, because they just weren't getting the viewers in the face of new competition.
I did try and catch in on Sony tv but for some absolutely bizarre reason it cut out at the point where pacey works for some fancy broker firm and jen had taken Jensen (cant remember his characters name) to a party where joey was being an absolute ********. it was a while ago though so don't know if it re-started more recently? anyway, like I said I had seen bits and pieces of the season and bought the finale special on dvd so didn't think there was much point in forking out for dvd. but point was that broadcasters messed it up and took it from a channel where it had a great home. who didn't love Dermot's catch up summaries!? ah, T4.
I caught the last 6 or so epsiodes of the season over the last few weeks on Sony TV I was hoping they might start it from the beginning again but no such luck
IIRC the BBC did it with Heroes, and got absolutely screwed with the deal. Not only was it massively expensive, but the show sank after that point and then got cancelled fairly soon after...
Initially S1 was first shown on Sci Fi with the BBC acquiring the show after it became a surprise hit, but the show never recovered after the writers strike even though it continued for three more seasons.
Problem is, everyone loves Netflix now because it's £7 a month. But if Netflix start buying lots of other shows it will end up coming back to the consumer and then some. And in the meantime, Sky will have to start dropping channels because people are cord-cutting, which means that there won't be a home for a lot of US shows - no channels to buy them, and Netflix can't afford to pay for all of them without ramping up their subscription fee too high.
Netflix are producing original content now though or extending shows lives that have dedicated followings but are dropped by networks. If they do increase their prices they can justify that by saying it is being put into creating new shows or buying the rights from networks to run programs like The Killing.
How the BBC screwed over Buffy and The Wire was criminal. They ran all 5 seasons of the Wire on a nightly basis at like 11:40 PM, went through the entire series in like 2 and a half months. That should have been appointment TV, not treated like a soap opera they were trying to burn through to get off their programming slate.
How the BBC screwed over Buffy and The Wire was criminal. They ran all 5 seasons of the Wire on a nightly basis at like 11:40 PM, went through the entire series in like 2 and a half months. That should have been appointment TV, not treated like a soap opera they were trying to burn through to get off their programming slate.
The BBC only bought the wire after it had finished it's run on FX and almost everbody who wanted to see it had bought the box set, I doubt an earlier timeslot would have made much difference.
No sign of Continuum season three over here. And now they no longer have Miami and New York to rotate it with, Channel 5 have only just started showing the current season of CSI AFTER it finished in the US!
Sometimes though shows do resurface some years after being dropped by another UK Channel. IIRC ITV only ever showed one season of Flashpoint, the remaining seasons were eventually shown on Universal, who also recently showed the third and final season of The Border after FX only showed the first two. But I'm STILL patiently waiting for someone to pick up season four onwards of Rescue Me! And why does something that's, shall we say, a little quirky and different like Necessary Roughness not get picked up over here until after its run for three seasons and been cancelled?
No sign of Continuum season three over here. And now they no longer have Miami and New York to rotate it with, Channel 5 have only just started showing the current season of CSI AFTER it finished in the US!
Sometimes though shows do resurface some years after being dropped by another UK Channel. IIRC ITV only ever showed one season of Flashpoint, the remaining seasons were eventually shown on Universal, who also recently showed the third and final season of The Border after FX only showed the first two. But I'm STILL patiently waiting for someone to pick up season four onwards of Rescue Me! And why does something that's, shall we say, a little quirky and different like Necessary Roughness not get picked up over here until after its run for three seasons and been cancelled?
Thanks for the heads up about necessary roughness I was going to give that a watch as I thought it was a new show but I might not bother now that I know it's been cancelled unless it ended well with no cliffhangers?
I don't want to start a new thread as i doubt it will attract much attention but after 2 years Sky Atlantic has FINALLY got round to showing the final Season 2 of Golden Globe-winning Enlightened. It started last Friday night, but it's getting repeated tonight. It's being shown in double bill slot over the coming weeks.
I loved this show when Season 1 aired. Really looking forward to catching up and seeing how the show ends. Laura Dern is fantastic in this.
Sky....please sort out Bored To Death the final Season 3! Must be 3 years for that now.
What I find most stunning is that all too often pirated HD files genuinely beat Sky HD, ITV, CH4 Itunes, Netflix for picture quality. It's really funny that the 720p files often retain more actual picture detail than the broadcast we get over here which are when properly de-interlaced 1080p, mostly down to bitrate starvation and detail filtering to get down to that bitrate.
I'm not saying 720p is better than 1080i or 1080p, higher resolutions are clearly better when encoded properly.
What's even better the pirated versions increasingly are sourced from high bitrate network feeds re-encoded in with an open source H.264 encoder x264 in VBR ( which consistently crushes most broadcaster encoders for maintaining high quality at lower bitrates ), with no logo's, no adverts, at the proper intended playback speed.
The pirates seem to have access to FOX, CBS, CW, NBC, ABC logo free high bitrate network feeds. The full size transport stream captures from these feeds are beautiful and exactly the quality we should expect on our TV screens.
Alot of the time pirated TV shows are the next best way to watch after buying the Blu-Ray. This is something the Likes of Sky, ITV, CH4, CH5, netflix and itunes need to sort out. I also think it's about high time you could subscribe to get advert free versions of content on PSB channels in high quality, and the likes of Sky stop charging a premium and putting adverts in the middle of TV shows, you wouldn't tolerate adverts mid movie on sky movies.
Comments
I guess, probably just as well I don't run a business then. It just seems there must be a solution out there somewhere whereby fans don't lose out just for living in UK. I begrudge having to buy boxsets when I subscribe to both sky and Netflix and still cant watch the shows I like!
A lot of the time, if it doesn't air on TV, they won't release the boxset, because they don't want to affect the chances of selling it to a TV broadcaster...
You say you haven't seen the final season of Dawsons Creek why have you not just bought it on DVD? If you had known earlier that season was just being shown on Sony tv!
I don't disagree, but I just think that broadcasters often get the blame when it isn't really their fault. A lot of the time it is because the studio has an unrealistic view on how much a programme should be worth, and they won't budge on it because doing so might create a ripple effect on the price of everything else.
I agree there has to be a solution, and I think long term it will be a combination of the SVOD providers buying more shows and studios being more flexible on price points.
I did try and catch in on Sony tv but for some absolutely bizarre reason it cut out at the point where pacey works for some fancy broker firm and jen had taken Jensen (cant remember his characters name) to a party where joey was being an absolute ********. it was a while ago though so don't know if it re-started more recently? anyway, like I said I had seen bits and pieces of the season and bought the finale special on dvd so didn't think there was much point in forking out for dvd. but point was that broadcasters messed it up and took it from a channel where it had a great home. who didn't love Dermot's catch up summaries!? ah, T4.
I do remember that, and there was really no excuse, other than the fact that BBC2 has to show the snooker. There's a broader problem with the BBC, which is that while they do buy US shows, it's not really part of their remit as a public service broadcaster (compared with, say, showing UK sport or UK news). So they didn't really care about the fact that they would be dropping the show for weeks on end. A commercial broadcaster would probably have planned it more carefully, but the BBC basically said "who cares?"
also used to love that BB2 and C4 would show US shows on at 6pm on a weeknight, (Blossom/all American Girl/Boy Meets World/Fresh Prince) shame they don't do that now and all you get is endless Hollyoaks/Simpsons/I don't even know what's on BBC2 anymore! But im probably getting way off topic here.
That's due to competition though. In the early 90s, there were only four channels (hardly anyone had Sky back then), and at 6pm both BBC1 and ITV had news on. So there were enough teenagers and young adults around that both BBC2 and Channel 4 could air ropey American sitcoms or "yoof" programming. But once more people started to get multichannel, and once Friends kickstarted the explosion in US sitcoms, every other satellite channel was showing them, and Channel 4 could no longer get away with showing A Different World or Blossom.
I mean, if you remember, it wasn't just contemporary classics like Fresh Prince. BBC2 used to show the original Star Trek at 6pm, and Channel 4 used to have Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Once American television started becoming much more prevalent on British television, terrestrial channels could no longer afford to show cheap, old series, because they just weren't getting the viewers in the face of new competition.
I caught the last 6 or so epsiodes of the season over the last few weeks on Sony TV I was hoping they might start it from the beginning again but no such luck
Initially S1 was first shown on Sci Fi with the BBC acquiring the show after it became a surprise hit, but the show never recovered after the writers strike even though it continued for three more seasons.
Netflix are producing original content now though or extending shows lives that have dedicated followings but are dropped by networks. If they do increase their prices they can justify that by saying it is being put into creating new shows or buying the rights from networks to run programs like The Killing.
How the BBC screwed over Buffy and The Wire was criminal. They ran all 5 seasons of the Wire on a nightly basis at like 11:40 PM, went through the entire series in like 2 and a half months. That should have been appointment TV, not treated like a soap opera they were trying to burn through to get off their programming slate.
The BBC only bought the wire after it had finished it's run on FX and almost everbody who wanted to see it had bought the box set, I doubt an earlier timeslot would have made much difference.
Sometimes though shows do resurface some years after being dropped by another UK Channel. IIRC ITV only ever showed one season of Flashpoint, the remaining seasons were eventually shown on Universal, who also recently showed the third and final season of The Border after FX only showed the first two. But I'm STILL patiently waiting for someone to pick up season four onwards of Rescue Me!
Thanks for the heads up about necessary roughness I was going to give that a watch as I thought it was a new show but I might not bother now that I know it's been cancelled unless it ended well with no cliffhangers?
I loved this show when Season 1 aired. Really looking forward to catching up and seeing how the show ends. Laura Dern is fantastic in this.
Sky....please sort out Bored To Death the final Season 3! Must be 3 years for that now.
I'm not saying 720p is better than 1080i or 1080p, higher resolutions are clearly better when encoded properly.
What's even better the pirated versions increasingly are sourced from high bitrate network feeds re-encoded in with an open source H.264 encoder x264 in VBR ( which consistently crushes most broadcaster encoders for maintaining high quality at lower bitrates ), with no logo's, no adverts, at the proper intended playback speed.
The pirates seem to have access to FOX, CBS, CW, NBC, ABC logo free high bitrate network feeds. The full size transport stream captures from these feeds are beautiful and exactly the quality we should expect on our TV screens.
Alot of the time pirated TV shows are the next best way to watch after buying the Blu-Ray. This is something the Likes of Sky, ITV, CH4, CH5, netflix and itunes need to sort out. I also think it's about high time you could subscribe to get advert free versions of content on PSB channels in high quality, and the likes of Sky stop charging a premium and putting adverts in the middle of TV shows, you wouldn't tolerate adverts mid movie on sky movies.