A pivotal event is about to happen, and it comes none too soon. In fact, it’s several years late, but I’ll take it and hopefully it will lead to some relief of the frustration I vented earlier about the slow distribution of shows to other countries than their origin, and how this facilitated piracy, but it didn’t have to be that way. The Walking Dead wil be making global distribution of the new season within 24 hours of its release in the U.S.

“The Walking Dead” wakes up and fights piracy by releasing global versions earlier

By Jason Lynch

Jason Lynch is the former television editor at People magazine.

In the coming days, zombies are going to take over the world. Again.

On Sunday, the horror series The Walking Dead kicks off its fourth season on AMC, and its premiere episode is packed with stomach-churning gore, nail-biting suspense and of course, zombies galore. It’s a brutal, bloody show that is seemingly not for everyone—except that everyone seems to be watching. In March, the third season finale drew its largest audience ever, with 12.4 million viewers tuning in, and if the show’s viewing trends continue, Sunday’s ratings should be even higher.

But US audiences won’t be the only ones getting their zombie fix. Within 24 hours of its US premiere, international viewers in more than 125 different countries will be able to watch as well... read the rest here

Yippee! No, I’m not a watcher of The Walking Dead, but this is huge! May other producers be so overcome that they follow suit like lemmings. Are you hearing this, BBC?

Some of you may be thinking, “What’s the big deal? For years we’ve been watching shows from other countries shortly after their release.” Yeah, I know, but you weren’t accessing them through legal means, and if you were, it was usually with quite a delay in watching, and many shows were not dubbed into other languages. So this is new, and more important a sign that the networks are waking up to the fact that not only do viewers not want to wait for their tv, but they won’t!*

*Last year a new show called Touch had a simultaneous global release, so The Walking Dead is not breaking entirely new ground but rather will receive more attention for this phenomenon, and that’s a good thing!

Note: I’m debating about putting the Richard Armitage tag on this one. I’m not entirely sure that he’s going back to tv, but he’s the one who got me interested in watching tv again, and I have wondered why HBO Game of Thrones is following me when I have never written about that show. Interesting. Yeah, this is getting the tag. :D

On a related note: if you’re smart, and I assume all of you who read this blog are smart :D, and you like to invest in the stock market, I hope you are doing research on the revolution about to happen with Google TV and Apple TV. Many of you folks in Kansas City know what I’m talkin’ about.

Okay, I feel another tangent coming on, so I’ll stop that line of thought.

October 11, 2013
Categories: Geek, Rumors, Tangents . Tags: BBC, bittorent, downloading, file sharing, Global Distribution, Global Go, I want my tv now, piracy, Richard Armitage, Shaw Media, Video on Demand, Walking Dead . Author: RAFrenzy . Comments: 15 Comments