September 20, 2007
"Sorry, not available from your location"
The networks experimenting with offering their TV shows online is great for US viewers, but it's not helping us here in Europe as we don't have access.
After being enticed by NBC's Watch Shows Online Now! logo, clicking on a favorite series bring up the following message. "We're sorry, the the clip you selected isn't available from your location". The message may be worded differently, but the restriction is the same on every network. The only videos we can access are the previews.
European viewers are huge fans of US TV series as are South Koreans and Chinese. Many of the video sharing sites link to series coming from Chinese websites like ouou.com and tudou.com (they play in English with Chinese subtitles).
In France and Switzerland, we get US series on our networks 6 months to one year after the US, sometimes more. So the temptation to find them online is great and an immensely popular phenomenon. Also nearly half of European Internet users have a high speed broadband connection.
Networks should address the issue that in today's Internet world, TV viewers are savvy and know what's hot in the US. By the time our channels broadcast a popular show, we are now no longer watching, we've seen them months ago online.
Hopefully the European networks will figure out an economic model (pay per view or advertising), so that in Europe, we too can watch TV online, legally.
Here are some experiments going on:
In France:
-- TF1 will be launching on September 25, on TF1Vision, the latest episodes from the latest season of Heroes, 24 hours after it's US broadcast. It's pay per view video on demand, in streaming and will cost euro 1.99 or $2.80.
-- Canal+ offered exclusively on September 12, for free (briefly), the first episode of the first season of Big Love in streaming, to promote the launch of the show. It's no longer online.
In the UK
-- Viewers who have paid their UK television tax can download a client called iPlayer from the BBC site and then download any program that has run during the previous week and keep it on their computer for 30 days.
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