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Seven’s FlashForward “leaked” to US

What did you see? Monday night's episode of FlashForward, screen in Australia before the US, is now a hotly-sought online torrent.

joseph-fiennesMonday night’s episode of FlashForward was the last for the year on Seven, and screened before the US which took a broadcast break for Thanksgiving.

That resulted in the episode being uploaded as a torrent and now “leaked” to America.

The Hollywood Reporter notes that “Australians don’t care about our guilt-tinged empire-expanding holiday traditions and didn’t take a break. Whether the US-Aussie FlashForward schedule being jolted out-of-sync will result in future episodes also being leaked isn’t known.”

Presumably the episode will be downloaded across the US complete with a Channel 7 watermark.

It’s all rather ironic given Disney / ABC went to great lengths to make sure Aussie media didn’t reveal information on the series in the lead-up to the premiere, insisting they attend a cinema screening and sign confidentiality clauses.

The Hollywood Reporter goes as far as to note that “For the record, Aussies do have a Thanksgiving holiday, but it’s in May and they don’t really do it right.”

We do what?

Looks like somebody has been reading thanksgiving.org.au and presuming a religious observance amongst (some) worshippers is a national holiday. Not here, yankee…

Pass me the turkey.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

31 Responses

  1. Yep, nice 7HD logo in the corner, and probably our Monday Lotto results too! I can just see some US viewers going into a tizzy as to how a torrent of the episode could possibly be released before it has aired in the States. It’s Magic!!! And probably wondering where they can watch this mysterious 7HD channel! LOL

  2. @Craig: I think you’re right re: “I’m sure ABC could have stopped Seven from airing it if they wanted to”. Seeing as the yanks think we do Thanksgiving, maybe they also think we don’t have things like electricity or the internet here and don’t have the means to upload shows so they figured they were safe from the show being downloaded.

  3. Thanksgiving in May, since when??? Yes and we also celebrate American Indpendence Day because we love America soooooo much. LOL.

    I never saw the need for downloading, even shows i’m a massive fan of, i can wait a few weeks for it to screen here.

  4. I love being reminded of how stupid american media can be 🙂 That FlashForward episode was good though, cant wait for it to come back next year 🙂

  5. Slow TV news days in the US today ?
    They get upset because people in the US can download it.As far as I know people don’t have a gun to the head and are being forced to download it.Yanks just get upset over the most minor things,as you can see if you read the comments on the link,in particular one from HMS.All that anger over a simple download.Now we know why the US has so many serial killers.

  6. Sadly I should clarify my last post, I’m being dragged back to the ftv commercial fold with programmes like Judge John Deed, Kingdom and coming up the very very expensively made Kenneth Branagh ‘Wallander’ on Seven and 7Two, shame Auntie couldn’t get these bewdies. They of course will be recorded for watching in the next full on ratings periods

  7. Interestingly there didn’t appear to be a huge increase in ratings for Seven because Australians were seeing it premiered and had not oppurtunity to download before it aired

    Does downloading more harmless than the networks would have us think or is it more that no one in Australia actually cares about Flashforward?

    – I’m betting Flashforward gets bumped to 7Two in 2010 or a 9.30 slot on Seven.

  8. I think the reporter is the turkey in this story!

    Next time get your facts right and don’t blame ‘Australia’ for leaking it I’m sure ABC could have stopped Seven from airing it if they wanted to. Obviously they didn’t do anything wrong or the Disney&ABC lawyers would be all over them.

    IMO they did this to promote the show more are it’s not the hit they were hoping for.

  9. Canada is the source of many more early releases than Australia ever will be. They’ve seen all the Law and Order UK episodes, as an international example.

    Though I remember there was some controversy last year when AU had the most recent “Wallace and Gromit” several months before anywhere else, including the UK, and it was speeding across the torrent sites.

  10. Haha, thanksgiving in May for us Aussies! That’s hilarious 🙂

    I don’t know how or why they allowed it to happen but I think it’s great that we got the show before the yanks. Don’t forget the cranberry sauce with that turkey…

  11. Reminds me of the shocked Brits trying to work out how the new Wallace & Gromit episode “leaked” onto Torrent sites earlier this year prior to its airing in the UK… complete with an ABC1 watermark.

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