Inspired by The Oatmeal, Todd VanDerWerff wrote about his own experiences with piracy and what it means for great TV.
Here’s the concluding paragraph of Todd’s article, and a conclusion that I think ignores the reality of why people want it now (and the role that sites like the A.V. Club play in it).
It’s been argued that Hollywood has overblown the threat it receives from Internet piracy, and, to be sure, the number of people pirating works is substantial, but not nearly as large as the number actually watching on TV or in movie theaters. Piracy has always represented more of a potential threat to a network like HBO, which takes Internet piracy seriously enough to actively attempt to stop it, unlike many other networks. (My numerous friends with cease-and-desist letters from the network will attest to that.) It also clearly sees that there’s an audience for its programming online, because HBO Go might be the single best-designed streaming site out there. But it’s inadvertently trapped itself with a model that all but requires a virtue that the Internet has virtually eradicated: patience. I suspect this all reaches a point in the next decade where HBO either kisses traditional cable companies goodbye and follows Netflix off into online-based subscriptions or where the network gets trapped in its own vicious circle and dragged down by its own massive success. So, yes, I’ll advocate patience, I think. HBO has been a force for good in the television world for almost two decades. I get why you’re cutting your cords, but isn’t it worth waiting a little while for a DVD in that case?
Here’s the thing about waiting for the DVD, and patience, that’s being overlooked here: the people who want to watch these shows now, who can’t wait to see them for a year when the DVD is released (or even a week when it’s up on iTunes, for shows that are) are reacting to conditions that the Internet has crated besides “everything is free and available immediately somewhere.” Namely, it’s the fact that the cultural conversation moves much faster now than it ever has before.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you wait a year to watch Game Of Thrones, you also miss the chance to participate in the dialogue around the show that happens in TV Club. You miss the discussions on Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr; all of the references go flying over your head; you’re left out of the conversation. Sites like the AV Club benefit tremendously from the fact that these conversations occur immediately — I suspect strongly that TV Club is the most popular, and fastest-growing, part of the site. That happens because people want to be a part of these discussions in real-time.
My brother doesn’t really bother with any of this stuff, and he waited to watch Game Of Thrones because he wasn’t missing out on the chance to be a part of this important aspect of the culture. This pays huge dividends for things that happen in realtime: do you think it’s a coincidence that, despite the fact that we live in an ever-increasing niche-identified cultural world, the ratings for NFL games started breaking records every single week as the places to have online conversations about them took off? Part of the reason shows like Game Of Thrones become such breakout hits is because of this conversation — what used to be called buzz, but which is, I think, more sincere and more important.
So the idea that it’s just some TV show that you can watch whenever — I think that’d probably be bad for HBO and a series like Game Of Thrones; it would definitely be a bad thing for the A.V. Club. And more importantly, it’s not the world for which these shows are being created anymore. Not just because we’re all greedy and impatient want-it-now types who don’t give a shit about anything but our own gratification, but because the conversation that gets people interested in Game Of Thrones, and gives people like me and Todd jobs, requires these things to all happen on a similar clock.
(And there’s no need to read this as a full-throated defense of piracy: it’s an argument for how entertainment companies seem to misunderstand their most dedicated audience. Piracy, right now, is a solution that meets the demand of that audience. Selling episodes of Game Of Thrones for five bucks on iTunes, or access to HBO Go for $20 a month, would do that, as well.)
