The Trans-Atlantic Scheduling Conflict

The other day I was talking about Dexter, and I mentioned the (frankly insane) amount of time that it takes some UK TV channels to show American imports. This was something that was fine in the eighties and nineties, because back then, UK fans didn’t really know what was going on with US television anyway, and regardless, there was no other way for them to watch the show, short of having a friend or relative in America video (yes, how dated is this reference now) the show for them, then air mail it over. Even then, it would only work if you had one of those funky VCRs that played both British and American video tapes.

Then came the internet, to be specific dial up internet, giving us Brits access to amazon.com and playusa.com, where, if you had a multi-regional DVD player, you could buy exorbitantly priced American DVDs of your favourites shows, pay the ridiculous shipping charges, and then be ahead of all of your friends whilst they waited months and months for Channel 4 or the BBC to show episodes that had aired in America up to a year before.

But then came illegal downloading and streaming, which was a game changer for the more forward thinking of TV companies. People were no longer content to be months and months behind their American cousins when it came to their favourite shows, and rather than waiting for TV companies to pull their finger out and air the show, they’d just watch it directly online. Sky found a way around this by showing LOST just days after it was aired in the US, ending with them simulcasting the final episode at the same time that it was shown in America. Now Sky Atlantic airs shows like Game of Thrones and Entourage the day after they’re shown in the states, making downloading them illegally impossible to justify. Paramount has followed suit with South Park, and Sky1 looks to be doing the same with Glee.

Not that I ever would justify it. To make it clear, I’m not condoning people downloading things illegally, I’m saying that I understand why they do it. If they pay for a channel like FX, and FX are showing Dexter in six months, why not just download it now? They would have watched it in six months anyway and they’re still paying for the channel, so in theory there are no losers, right? Wrong. And this is what really annoys me about the channels that are stuck in the nineties when it comes to US scheduling; the more people that watch a show when it’s on television, the better the ratings are, and the better the ratings are, the better the advertising revenue is. The more advertising revenue there is, theoretically, the more that channel can invest in shows. And that’s what I don’t understand about TV schedulers. Love or hate internet streaming/downloading, it’s a fact of modern existence. You can’t just close your eyes and wish it wasn’t there. The quicker they air their US imports, the more viewers that they’ll have, and ergo, the more they can charge for advertising slots.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know anything about the practicalities of scheduling, but surely, even if there’s a greater cost to air a show within a week of it broadcasting in the US, that money can be recouped by increased advertising revenue? Maybe I’m just being too logical about it.

Ultimately though, whilst FX holds the rights to True Blood, Burn Notice and Dexter, UK viewers will remain a season behind their American counterparts. I have no idea what Comedy Central is doing with 30 Rock and The US Office, but their scheduling is so all over the place that perhaps they’ve shown the new series of these but just buried them in a midnight slot. God knows, now they’ve bought the rights to Friends that’s all we can expect from them every evening from 6 until 10. Which is their prerogative. I don’t own Comedy Central or FX, and if their owners think the delay appropriate (or more realistically cost effective), who am I to argue? I’m not a TV executive, and so I’m not qualified to make those decisions. Unfortunately though, whilst they are scheduling in this way, I fear that illegal downloading will only become more prevalent.  And downloading TV shows is a gateway crime, which leads to illegal music and film downloads. And sadly, a lot of it could be avoided by smarter scheduling.

But then again, that’s just my opinion.