With just a month before new television shows begin airing for the fall season, pilots and other unaired programs are taking file sharing networks by storm.
More than 10 episodes of highly anticipated shows have leaked online before their air dates, according to torrent-tracking site TorrentFreak. Leaks have offered sneak peeks at upcoming shows, including time-traveling cop drama Life on Mars, con artist dramedy Leverage and white-collar comedy Do Not Disturb, as well as unaired episodes of fan favorites like Stargate Atlantis.
"The number of leaked pilots and shows is always increasing," said Eric Garland, CEO of digital media tracking site BigChampagne. "Pilots started leaking as early as May and June, which is much earlier than usual and it will continue."
Welcome to the dawning age of the "pre-air" season, where shows bubble up online several months before their debut on network television.
-The leaks extend to some of TV's most highly anticipated new shows. In
June, the first episode of J.J. Abrams' supernatural show Fringe (pictured) surfaced on file sharing networks -- three months before its scheduled premiere. HBO's Southern vampire drama True Blood became available for download through file sharing sites around the same time.
The high quality of the Fringe download, alongside a source tag that identifies the torrent as a DVD screener, has sparked speculation over whether the pilot was intentionally leaked to build early buzz before the show's broadcast premiere.
Publicity reps for Fringe at Fox and Warner Bros. declined to comment on the pre-air leak of the $10 million pilot, beyond a Fox spokeswoman who said the network is "aware of the situation" and "looking into it." Requests for comment from HBO, ABC and Sci Fi Channel were not received in time for this article.
BigChampagne's Garland said he thinks the leaks most likely stem from trigger-happy studio employees who upload copies onto the networking sites. "As copies are prepared for distribution, some of them will fall into the hands of people who will be unscrupulous about it," he said.
The founder of TorrentFreak, who goes by Ernesto, agreed, saying he didn't think it was official network policy to distribute shows on P2P networks. "But I'm sure they [don't] mind either," he said. "I interviewed Jesse Alexander, co-producer of Heroes, he said that his show benefits from BitTorrent."
Preair leaks are not always a bad thing, said Garland and Ernesto, because pilfered copies can generate hype and build anticipation for shows.
"There isn't always a great number of people who are aware that these leaked show are even online," said Garland. "It's usually a small group, a self-selected audience that tends to be very vocal."
The trouble comes, Garland says, when a leaked episode is unfinished, or a leaked show is undergoing major rewrites or reshoots. Having an inferior episode get out into the wild can be a detriment to a show's popularity. Even so, says Garland, the solution isn't to play a digital Whac-A-Mole game to try to recover leaked copies, but to work toward better business models that focus on ubiquity of content online to whet demand for the shows when they air.
"The internet doesn't like scarcity, so if you try to make it unavailable or only available to some people, the internet will fight it," said Garland. "And once something is out, it's very hard to take it back."
See also:
- Fall TV Preview: Time Travel, Vampires and Weird Science
- Fringe Pilot Leaks Online Three Months Before Premiere
- Pirated Copies of Aussie Sopranos in High Demand
- Cloverfield Director Talks Creature Sequels, Suburban Bank Robbers
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