TV Piracy, Broadcast Delays, and the ABC: The Doctor Who Simulcast

MECM30004: Media Futures and New Technologies Nathan Fioritti - 587641

TV Piracy, Broadcast Delays, and the ABC

The Doctor Who Simulcast

Nathan Fioritti – The University of Melbourne

7 November, 2014

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Executive Summary This report examines the eighth season simulcast of Doctor Who on ABC TV within the context of the piracy issue and debate in Australia, in order to evaluate the ABC’s approach to addressing broadcast delays. This report finds the simulcast of Doctor Who, and the ABC’s approach overall, to be a success. It observes that the ABC is leading the way in addressing broadcast delays within the Australian TV industry. In exploring possible future action, it finds that the ABC, as Australia’s public service broadcaster, could be doing more to improve the piracy situation. It also finds that further action will benefit consumers, commercial free-to-air TV networks, and others in the private sector. This report recommends that:

- The simulcast and evening broadcast of Doctor Who is continued for future broadcasts of the TV show, following the success of this method during the current season.

- The ABC extends the reduction and elimination of broadcast delays to other TV programs beyond Doctor Who to serve the public interest, as well as potentially influence the private sector and Australia’s TV industry to adapt.

- TV programs remain available on iview following broadcast transmission

so that consumers may easily access legal channels at any time.

- The ABC continues to explore potential action to prevent TV piracy.

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Contents Executive Summary……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……….. 1 Contents…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………... 2 1 Introduction..................................................................................................................................................... 3 2 Piracy and the role of the ABC……....................................................................................................... 4

2.1 Piracy and broadcast delays in Australia…………………………………….………...……….. 4 2.2 The ABC in the post-broadcast era………………………………….………..………………………. 4

3 Doctor Who broadcasts in Australia………………….………………………………………………..……………... 7

3.1 Doctor Who on ABC TV and iview………………………………………………………………………. 7 3.2 The Doctor Who simulcast………………………………………………………………..………………….. 8 3.3 Other shows and broadcast delays…………………………………………………………………… 9

4 Discussion of potential action following the Doctor Who simulcast…...……………. 11

4.1 The effectiveness of the Doctor Who simulcast……..………..………………………… 11 4.2 Reducing piracy and the public interest…………………………………….………………….. 11 4.3 Influencing the private sector......................................................................................... 11 4.4 Extending the reduction of broadcast delays……………………...………..…………….. 12

5 Conclusions and Recommendations………………………………………………………………................... 13 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………. 14

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1 Introduction The ABC has been Australia’s public broadcaster since July 1, 1932, launching ABC Television on November 5, 1956. The public broadcaster went online in 1995 at the web address www.abc.net.au, and launched its online streaming service called iview in 2008. The ABC prides itself on leading the way through the technological developments during the 2000s. As it states on its website: “By using emerging internet technologies – podcasting, vodcasting, video-on-demand and streaming – the ABC lead the way in Australian electronic media in making content available whenever, wherever and on whatever device audiences wanted” (ABC History, 2014). The latest challenge the public broadcaster faces is the rising trend of piracy in Australia and how much of an influence broadcast delays have on this illegal activity. The simulcast of the eighth season of Doctor Who on ABC TV served as an experiment in how consumers’ behaviour would change if broadcast delays were not present for foreign TV shows in Australia. The piracy issue is of critical importance to the Australian TV industry, and while it is difficult to measure the extent and effects of piracy, they can be roughly projected through variations in viewership via legal channels. Piracy and the role of the ABC in the post-broadcast area will be discussed before moving on to the Doctor Who simulcast in detail. This will be examined within the context of the piracy issue and debate in Australia, the broadcast history of the show, and the delays associated with other foreign TV shows broadcast in Australia. The ABC’s approach will be evaluated and recommendations for possible future action will be made based on the results and what appears to be most beneficial for the public and others involved.

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2 Piracy and the role of the ABC 2.1 Piracy and broadcast delays in Australia It is not at all uncommon for foreign shows from places such as the US and UK to be broadcast in Australia months after their release, and there is no doubt that broadcast delays, and other forms of inaccessibility, are major contributing factors for piracy in Australia. Many voices have reflected this in the past (Malik, 2007; Filloux, 2012), and the momentum continues to grow. Australian consumer group CHOICE recently stated “the best way to address online piracy is to improve access to legitimate content” (Cartwright, 2014). iiNet similarly claimed their customers want to be able to “access content at the same time as their Facebook friends or Twitter followers” and “are willing to pay for it” (iiNet, 2014). While Australians are among the greatest consumers of pirated video content, according to the Australian Home Entertainment Distributors Association, they are also among the greatest consumers of legal video content (Quinn, 2014). If broadcast delays in Australia were to increase, it follows on that piracy would decrease. Although Australian audiences want to be to be treated equally in comparison with the rest of the world, there are reasons for broadcast delays. Some of these are that Australia’s rating system follows a different timeline to others, location-based promotional commitments for TV programs often need to be spread out, and having later releases eliminates the risk of a TV show being cancelled mid-season because it has already been produced (Kidman, 2011b). All of these things make it difficult for commercial free-to-air TV networks to broadcast shows without such long delays, because they operate based on ratings and advertising revenue. 2.2 The ABC in the post-broadcast era Unlike commercial free-to-air TV networks, ABC TV is a public broadcaster, and so, is more flexible in this regard. The ABC exists in order to serve the public

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interest, and has much more freedom to explore what works and what does not work. The launch of iview in 2008, and developments such as the gradual elimination of the Doctor Who broadcast delay, are both important parts of the ABC’s attempts to adapt to the post-broadcast era. iview allows for shows broadcast on ABC TV to be watched at any time for (usually) 14 days after broadcast transmission (iview, 2014). The post-broadcast era, which has developed as a result of the Internet and digital content, involves the emergence of the Internet (or peer-to-peer file-sharing) model, as demonstrated in figure 1 (Lambert, 2014).

Figure 1: The Broadcast and Internet Models (Lambert)

The Internet model or peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing model cuts out the broadcaster, instead using file-sharing between users to distribute the TV content. By using this model, consumers are depriving broadcasters of the speculative profits that could be made if their consumption were mediated through legal channels (if available).

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The simulcast of Doctor Who, and immediate iview accessibility, follows the idea that if the broadcast model was in place upon release, then consumers would not need to use the Internet model and therefore, piracy of the TV show would be reduced.

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3 Doctor Who broadcasts in Australia In order to examine changes in the broadcasting of Doctor Who in Australia, a look at the broadcast history and incremental changes and outcomes was required. The ultimate aim was to contextualise this year’s simulcasting of the TV show within this broadcast history, as well as compare it with other foreign shows being broadcast around the time, so that it could be evaluated. 3.1 Doctor Who on ABC TV and iview Doctor Who was broadcast in Australia for the first time in 1965 by ABC’s ABW-2 channel in Perth (Dunne, 2003). The first season of the 2005 reboot of the show was broadcast with a delay of almost two months from the UK broadcast (ABC News, 2005). Since then, the broadcast delay has decreased while the pirating of TV shows and films in Australia has increased (IP Awareness, 2014). Over the last five years—and four seasons of Doctor Who—the ABC has decreased broadcast delays for the TV show in Australia, as demonstrated in figure 2 (ABC TV Blog, 2010; Kidman, 2011a; Hopewell, 2012; Perry, 2014).

Figure 2: Doctor Who Broadcast Delays in Australia graph

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Season 5 (2010) Season 6 (2011) Season 7 (2012) Season 8 (2014)

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Doctor Who Broadcast Delays in Australia

ABC TV delay (mode)

iView delay (mode)

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In 2011 the delay was decreased to one week, as compared to two weeks in 2010. ABC TV Head of Programming Brendan Dahill recognised at the time that viewers did not want to wait, and would download the show if it was not available quickly (Kidman, 2011a). In 2012 the ABC made the seventh season of Doctor Who available on iview immediately after it was broadcast in the UK, but still continued broadcasting on ABC TV with a one week delay. The first episode of the season received 75,900 plays in the first 24 hours it was available for on iview, setting a new record for the site (Idato, 2012). This year, the TV show has been simulcast in the early morning with the UK, available on iview from then on, and broadcast again in the evening on the same day. 3.2 The Doctor Who simulcast The simulcast of the first episode of season eight, ‘Deep Breath’, achieved a five city average audience share of 148,000 (34% share) as well as 710,000 (12% share) for the evening broadcast. Together, ‘Deep Breath’ reached an estimated 1.175 million viewers (Kidman, 2014). The evening broadcast placed ninth on OzTAM’s ratings (figure 3) and was the highest rating foreign show broadcast that day (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014). The ABC also recorded 62,000 plays in the first 24 hours on iview (Kidman, 2014). The simulcast has continued throughout the eighth season based on these initial results.

Figure 3: OzTAM ratings published by The Sydney Morning Herald

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3.3 Other shows and broadcast delays In a study conducted by Spencer (2014) of 31 recent US TV shows, 77% of the 31 shows examined did not reach Australian TV in less than a week, and only 23% were shown within a day (figure 4).

Figure 4: Delay to Australian TV graph (correct as at July 15)

Of these 31 shows, seven were broadcast on free-to-air TV (figure 5)—although none were broadcast on ABC TV. Out of the seven, five were broadcast on SBS, one was broadcast on Nine, and one was broadcast on Ten (Spencer, 2014). In comparison with Doctor Who, the broadcast delays of these shows ranged from 7 - 56 days and only three were made available digitally within a month.

Figure 5: Delay to Australian TV graph (correct as at July 15, cont. on next page)

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4 Discussion of potential action following the Doctor Who simulcast 4.1 The effectiveness of the Doctor Who simulcast The Doctor Who simulcast, as conveyed through the results of the ‘Deep Breath’ season premiere and the sustained simulcast, has proved to be highly effective. The gradual move towards eliminating broadcast delays has presented a successful outcome for ABC TV, proving that viewers would pursue legal means before turning to piracy if they were made available early on. While it is difficult to measure the extent of piracy, there is a coherent case to be made that if the amount of legal viewings were to increase, the amount of illegal viewings would decrease. It has also been demonstrated that iview played an important part in enabling legal access for viewers at any time after broadcast transmission. Overall, through the Doctor Who simulcast, it has also been shown that ABC TV is leading the way in eliminating broadcast delays, but this is mostly because other networks are not taking similar action. 4.2 Reducing piracy and the public interest As Australia’s public service broadcaster, the ABC should be at the forefront of not only providing consumers with what they want, but also encouraging the reduction of piracy. While the ABC is leading the way, there is more that could be done to improve broadcast delays in Australia now that positive results have been achieved. It is in the public interest for the ABC to pursue, or at least examine, the potential action it could take following on from this. 4.3 Influencing the private sector If the ABC were to continue to invest in more simulcasts of foreign TV shows and maintain strong results, there is a good chance that commercial free-to-air TV networks, and others in the private sector, will follow suit. The resounding message appears to be that while technology has changed—and therefore altered the Australian TV industry—industry practice has not yet adequately adapted to the changes. This potential influencing of the private sector might

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also lead to a change in Australia’s rating system, which seems to be greatly needed. 4.4 Extending the reduction of broadcast delays Based on findings, the possibility of extending the reduction of broadcast delays to other TV shows on ABC TV has been shown to be feasible, as well as beneficial for the public. This could be instituted gradually, as was done with Doctor Who, or immediately—which would be preferred considering the prevalence of the issue. Extending the reduction of broadcast delays would also assist in reducing piracy, influencing the private sector to take similar action, and encouraging the Australian TV industry to adapt to the new technological landscape in a way which better suits global TV program releases.

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5 Conclusions and Recommendations The simulcast of Doctor Who was a success and shows that the ABC is leading the way when it comes to eliminating broadcast delays. While this is the case, the ABC, as Australia’s public service broadcaster, could be doing more to improve the piracy situation. Pursuing further action on this matter is in the public interest, and will serve to benefit consumers, commercial free-to-air TV networks, and others in the private sector. Recommendations based on the results of this report:

- The simulcast and evening broadcast of Doctor Who is continued for future broadcasts of the TV show, following the success of this method during the current season.

- The ABC extends the reduction and elimination of broadcast delays to other TV programs beyond Doctor Who to serve the public interest, as well as potentially influence the private sector and Australia’s TV industry to adapt.

- TV programs remain available on iview following broadcast transmission

so that consumers may easily access legal channels at any time.

- The ABC continues to explore potential action to prevent TV piracy.

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References ABC History (2014) ‘Who we are: About the ABC’ http://about.abc.net.au/who-we-are/abc-history accessed 2 November, 2014. ABC News (2005) ‘Long wait over for Australian 'Whovians'’ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-05-21/long-wait-over-for-australian-whovians/1575274 21 May, accessed 28 October, 2014. ABC TV Blog (2010) ‘Doctor Who premieres in Australia on ABC iview - midnight Friday 16th April’ http://blogs.abc.net.au/abc_tv/2010/03/doctor-who-launches-in-australia-on-abc-iview.html 10 March, accessed on 28 October, 2014. Cartwright, M. (2014) ‘Everything you need to know about three strikes: The government has flagged new anti-piracy measures – but what will they mean for consumers?’ http://www.choice.com.au/consumer-action/consumer-protection/digital-rights-copyright/Everything-you-need-to-know-about three-strikes.aspx 29 May, accessed 1 November, 2014. Dunne, M. (2003) ‘A separate adventure: Who in Au’ pp. 5-11 in Chameleon Factor 78. Filloux, F. (2012) ‘Too many losers from delayed release of movies and shows’ http://consumersfederation.org.au/too-many-losers-from-delayed-release-of-movies-and-shows 26 November, accessed 28 October, 2014. Hopewell, L. (2012) ‘Doctor Who's Season 7 Premiere Smashes ABC iview Records’ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/09/doctor-who-season-7-premiere-smashes-abc-iview-records 3 September, accessed 28 October, 2014. Idato, M. (2012) http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/dr-who-transports-abc-to-forefront-of-antipiracy-war-20120903-259qo.html 3 September, accessed 28 October, 2014. iiNet (2014) ‘What’s the issue with Piracy in Australia?’ http://blog.iinet.net.au/issue-piracy-australia 10 June, accessed 1 November, 2014. IP Awareness (2014) ‘2014 Media Release’ http://www.ipawareness.com.au/LiteratureRetrieve.aspx?ID=178182 15 October, accessed 28 October, 2014.

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iview (2014) ‘What is iview?’ http://iview.abc.net.au/support/what-is-iview accessed 1 November, 2014. Kidman, A. (2011a) ‘Doctor Who Fast-Track to Remain at One Week’ http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/08/doctor-who-fast-track-to-remain-at-one-week 15 August, accessed 28 October, 2014. Kidman, A. (2011b) ‘Five Reasons Why Regional Delays Still Exist’ http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2011/12/five-reasons-why-regional-delays-still-exist 1 December, accessed 28 October, 2014. Kidman, A. (2014) ‘Doctor Who: ABC to simulcast the entire new series’ http://www.fatducktech.com/news/doctor-abc-simulcast-entire-series August 25, accessed 28 October, 2014. Lambert, A. (2014). MECM30004: Media Futures and New Technologies: Lecture 4 – ‘The free culture wars’ - creativity, copyright and the content industries. Melbourne: The University of Melbourne. Malik, A. (2007). ‘TV show delays drive Oz viewers to distraction: Taking matters into their own hands’ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/22/tv_delays 22 February, accessed 28 October, 2014. Perry, K. (2014) ‘ABC to Continue with Doctor Who Simulcasts after Ratings Success’ http://nelbie.com/kevmarl/2014/8/25/abc-to-continue-with-doctor-who-simulcasts-after-ratings-success 25 August, accessed 28 October, 2014. Quinn, K. (2014) ‘Australians fast becoming law-abiding downloaders for TV, movie content’ http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/box-seat/australians-fast-becoming-lawabiding-downloaders-for-tv-movie-content-20140312-34m04.html 12 March, accessed 1 November, 2014. Spencer, G. (2014) ‘Watching TV in Australia: The Australian Delay Under The Microscope - Australia's Constant Wait For Award-Winning TV’ http://reckoner.com.au/2014/07/watching-tv-in-australia-the-australian-delay-under-the-microscope 25 July, accessed 28 October, 2014. The Sydney Morning Herald (2014) ‘Doctor Who returns with a top 10 ranking in TV ratings’ http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/doctor-who-returns-with-a-top-10-ranking-in-tv-ratings-20140825-1080za.html 25 August, accessed 28 October, 2014.