Chapter IV: Piracy

As stated in a previous blog entry, as Australian television viewers we’re often forced to wait lengthy periods of time to watch our favourite shows. Because of this, in conjunction with increasing access to faster and faster internet speeds, it’s unsurprising that Australia is now notorious for high rates of television piracy.

When Game of Thrones aired its Season 3 premiere at the end of March, it was watched by 5.5 million viewers in the US. It was then pirated by at least 5.2 million people, with the majority being from Australia (Ernesto, 2013).

US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich (Source: News.com.au)

This led to Jeffrey Bleich, the US ambassador to Australia, condemning the actions of pirates. He argued that the cost of purchasing the series (or access to it), and the lag time between its airing in the US and Australia is not a good enough excuse to blatantly steal the product (Piotrowski, 2013).

At the time, Australians could purchase a season pass for $33.99 on iTunes, or sign up to a Foxtel subscription nearing $75 a month to watch the show. However, recently Foxtel signed a deal with HBO, meaning that the show can only be digitally downloaded after the entire season has aired on Foxtel first (LeMay, 2013). When Season 4 airs in 2014, the only legal timely method for Australians to view Game of Thrones will be through Foxtel.

Comic on The Oatmeal on Game of Thrones and piracy. Warning: a little NSFW. (Source: Kotaku)

Humorously, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeff Bewkes has linked the piracy of Thrones to an increase in the number of subscriptions to HBO, saying that the positive word-of-mouth reviews generated by piracy provides them with more revenue at the end of the day (Spangler, 2013).

And this isn’t such a crazy idea. Many people have pointed out that those who acquire a digital product via free methods and then don’t purchase it in the end were likely never going to purchase it in the first place. As Doctorow (2008, p. 71) says, “I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience”.

Pirates are nothing new in the world of Game of Thrones (Source: HBO)

When a CEO says that the huge levels of piracy is “better than an Emmy” (Bewkes, cited in Spangler, 2013), it’s probably time to consider whether the negative stigma attached to it is justified.

Sources
Doctorow C, 2008 Context, Tachyon Publications, San Francisco

Ernesto 2013, ‘Top 10 most pirated tv-shows of the season’ TorrentFreak, 22 June, retrieved 19 August 2013, <http://torrentfreak.com/top-10-most-pirated-tv-shows-of-the-season-130622/>

LeMay, R 2013, ‘Foxtel locks up game of thrones: no more fast-tracked itunes downloads’ Delimiter, 14 May, retrieved 18 August 2013, <http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/14/foxtel-locks-up-game-of-thrones-no-more-fast-tracked-itunes-downloads/>

Piotrowski, D 2013, ‘US ambassador explains his fight against game of thrones piracy’ News.com.au, 3 May, retrieved 18 August 2013, <http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/television/us-ambassador-explains-his-fight-against-game-of-thrones-piracy/story-e6frfmyi-1226634534605>

Spangler, T 2013, ‘Time warner’s bewkes: piracy of hbo ‘game of thrones’ is ‘better than an emmy’’ Variety, 7 August, retrieved 18 August 2013, <http://variety.com/2013/digital/news/time-warners-bewkes-piracy-of-hbo-game-of-thrones-is-better-than-an-emmy-1200575271/>

Chapter III: Cultural Influences

I think one of the most interesting things in life is just how changeable it is. As individuals we are constantly adding to our personality and character through new experiences and lifestyle changes. So it would come as no surprise that we can in fact change our varying cultures through these same channels.

Today, I’ll be talking about how my expectations and views of a specific culture have been shaped by globalisation, that I am only now becoming a part of; the culture and lifestyle of the Western, Middle-class, Twentysomething.

American television shows have been the predominant shaper of my view. Shows such as Scrubs, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, How I Met Your Mother, more recently New Girl and of course the venerable behemoth Friends, all revolve around a group of people in their mid-twenties trying to juggle the various aspects of their social (and on occasion, their working) lives. Programs such as these inform my understanding of what life for these twentysomethings, and as a natural step, suggest what my own twentysomething life should be like.

The cast of Friends (Source: Vanity Fair)

From these shows I can gather that the twentysomething:

•           Drinks a lot of coffee
•           Goes out for almost every meal
•           Has their own apartment
•           Gets up to a lot of shenanigans
•           Generally cycles through relationships a lot
•           Goes to a lot of parties and the like

Now, comparing these ‘expectations’ to the reality of the kind of culture I currently find myself in show some stark contrasts.

•           They
•           Have
•           So
•           Much
•           Money
•           And
•           Free
•           Time
•           But
•           Rarely
•           Work?

Charlie Kelly from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Source: Blogspot)

Clearly the culture that these shows are projecting are of an exaggerated nature (they wouldn’t be fun to watch otherwise!), and the economical standards, technological states, and geographical locations in which these twentysomethings are living life in are different to the one I’ve found myself entering today.

What’s more interesting, though, isn’t what’s different between the expectations and reality, but what is similar.

Taking away the exaggerations that are made purely to tell a story, I can step back and think “Hey, I actually do go out for coffee a lot,” or “Hey, I do go out to restaurants with friends a lot,”. Nobody explicitly told me to do either of these things; I just did them because it seemed normal and what everyone else was doing.

Which begs the question, did the shows I watch influence the way I perceived this twentysomething culture, and in turn, affect the way I acted when I merged with this culture? Hatchen and Scotton (2002, p. 4) explain that when cultures collide due to the effects of globalisation, they alter each other and form a sort of ‘spliced’ version.

In this instance the Americanised portrayal of the lives of twentysomethings in various sitcoms influenced the way I saw this sort of lifestyle, making it out to be something it wasn’t quite. But then after becoming a part of the culture, the portrayals presented in these programs, to some extent however small, influenced my behaviour after setting an example of which to follow.

References

Hachten, WA, Scotton, JF 2002, 'News communication for a new global system', The world news prism: global media in an era of terrorism 2002, Iowa State Press, Ames, pp. 3-14

Chapter II: Globalisation Flows

“But I don’t quite understand the big deal about it,”

To most of us, a statement like this directed at any of our favourite television shows is likely to cause varying degrees of frustration. Fortunately, while discussing The Walking Dead with my mother, she was questioning the importance of the show being aired in Australia so soon after it airs in the US or UK.

In the past, Australia has been subject to significant delays in the airing of television content originally being shown in the US or UK, with seasons being shown here months or even years after their original air date. However this practice is becoming less common and we are seeing a trend in episodes being “fast-tracked”; resulting in same-week (such as FOX8’s Falling Skies), same-day (like Channel Ten’s Under The Dome) or even within a few hours of its premiere (either through television like Showcase’s Game Of Thrones or digitally, like ABC chose to do via its iView service with the first half of Doctor Who’s seventh season).

In reference to globalisation, these near-instantaneous releases help to prevent the slowing or breaking of the various forms of globalisation ‘flows’. When it takes months for a show to reach its audience in Australia, the spread of culture, information, media (and even that of capital) is reduced and runs the risk of lessening its impact thanks to the power of things like social media (for the record, I’m yet to find someone who wasn’t aware of a certain character death in the first season of Game Of Thrones before they saw it).

Rantanen (2005, pp. 2-3) makes the point of noting that international communication neglected to focus on people themselves, and that while intercultural communication was established in order to rectify this imbalance, neither recognised how the people were using the media they had access to. With this in mind we can see that the international communication of television has begun to recognise how the public is consuming media in modern times and that a staggered release results in a jagged effect on its audience and globalisation as a whole.

For my generation, with its access to instantaneous information, is almost required to have these television shows at the ready lest we fall behind in global trends (or worse; get spoiled!). While my mother, who barely uses the computer let alone social media, is content with watching ABC’s Hustle despite the time lag, for someone like myself who is fully subject to the effects of social media keeping the flows of globalisation moving is definitely a ‘big deal’.

References
Rantanen, T 2005, ‘Theorizing media globalization’, The media and globalization, Sage, London, pp. 1–18.

Chapter I: About Me

Hi there! I'm Rhys, and welcome to my blog for ALC215 Globalisation and the Media. Over the coming weeks I'll be writing about various topics relating to the phenomenon of globalisation. For now, though, I'll just introduce myself.

So I'm twenty, living in Melbourne and attending Deakin University. I'm approximately halfway through a double degree in Arts/Commerce, and majoring in Marketing, Media & Communication, and Social & Political Thought. Not entirely sure where it will all take me, as I'm fairly indecisive and can change my life course quite frequently, but I'm enjoying learning new things and discovering more about the world we live in.

In my spare time I enjoy watching television and cinema, particularly comedy and science fiction. I dabble in video games, love a wide range of the musical spectrum, and confess to being a little bit of a board game nerd too. Hanging out with friends (new and old) is also a high priority.

Looking forward to the next few months to come and discuss the multiple facets of globalisation weekly. Hopefully I can entertain and offer a few different insights.