You are so very wrong. Hardly any marketing is done for US shows abroad. You could easily miss the premiere of a new season if you weren't paying close attention.
US shows are thrown on the air mostly as filler, with some rare exceptions they are not the big moneymakers for non-US stations. Although not as carelessly as in the days before DVD box sets and mass piracy, when a episodes could be shown in the wrong order, series just disappear from the schedule unannounced for months, or stay on the shelve for years.
But they will still happily announce a series as "the new hit series from the US", knowing full well that the show has already been cancelled and they only have the 13 episodes to air... This is also largely because US shows are sold as package deals. If you want to buy House for your local market, you also have to buy the rights to crappy series you know nobody will watch, at least not on your station. So even if there is a potential audience for those series, they will barely get a chance to watch the series, since it will be programmed at some ungodly hour.
The Dutch broadcasters managed to ruin many shows like for instance Six Feet Under or Battlestar Galactica that way. Yeah, lots of people still saw them, but either pirated or on DVD. Following them on television was near impossible.
It's a business-model that prefers to destroy a popular product in order to maintain an artificial scarcity rather than to sell it directly to the consumers at reasonable price.
Maintaining this model ensures Hulu is never going to be available outside the US, unless the whole local broadcast market completely collapses.
Because there is more money to be made in ensuring that a show does not reach its audience. That's how fucked up the system is.
>Maintaining this model ensures Hulu is never going to be available outside the US, unless the whole local broadcast market completely collapses.
Can that time really be that far off? My impression is there's a huge demographic split between people who get shows on TV and people who get them on the internet. Granted, my friends are mostly tech types, but I don't know anybody who watches television in real time.
How long can the broadcast model survive if nobody is watching the commercials?
You are so very wrong. Hardly any marketing is done for US shows abroad. You could easily miss the premiere of a new season if you weren't paying close attention.
I live in Australia, and a HUGE amount of marketing is done for new US shows that they think will go well in Australia.
For example New Girl has had constant promotion for months, while Homeland has only had mild promotion.
US shows are thrown on the air mostly as filler, with some rare exceptions they are not the big moneymakers for non-US stations. Although not as carelessly as in the days before DVD box sets and mass piracy, when a episodes could be shown in the wrong order, series just disappear from the schedule unannounced for months, or stay on the shelve for years.
But they will still happily announce a series as "the new hit series from the US", knowing full well that the show has already been cancelled and they only have the 13 episodes to air... This is also largely because US shows are sold as package deals. If you want to buy House for your local market, you also have to buy the rights to crappy series you know nobody will watch, at least not on your station. So even if there is a potential audience for those series, they will barely get a chance to watch the series, since it will be programmed at some ungodly hour.
The Dutch broadcasters managed to ruin many shows like for instance Six Feet Under or Battlestar Galactica that way. Yeah, lots of people still saw them, but either pirated or on DVD. Following them on television was near impossible.
It's a business-model that prefers to destroy a popular product in order to maintain an artificial scarcity rather than to sell it directly to the consumers at reasonable price.
Maintaining this model ensures Hulu is never going to be available outside the US, unless the whole local broadcast market completely collapses.
Because there is more money to be made in ensuring that a show does not reach its audience. That's how fucked up the system is.