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Fast-tracking back on track

With Terra Nova on the way, Aussie networks appear to be lifting their game in order to thwart piracy.

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Aussie networks appear to be resuming fast-tracking of international shows in a bid to offset piracy.

TEN will launch new dino-series Terra Nova within a week of its US premiere. This follows the announcement that Glee‘s new season would air just hours after its US launch.

The Queensland-produced show will air at 8:30pm Sunday October 2nd. That pits it against Underbelly, the slot that unnerved The Slap.

“Terra Nova is a big event piece of television with amazing special effects,” TEN program chief David Mott told the Herald Sun.

“It is a very different space to Underbelly, in our view.”

Next week Nine swoops on the new-look Two and a Half Men just hours after its US premiere. Similarly, ABC1 is already screening Doctor Who within a week of its international debut. Foxtel has also had Torchwood on air withing 24 hours.

Seven is getting close to The Amazing Race (US), but will Nine match it with Survivor?

And what of Downton Abbey’s second season, about to premiere in the UK? The final season of Desperate Housewives is another that will be hard to keep under wraps.

43 Responses

  1. A little while back Seven’s The Morning Show played the new season trailer of Downtown Abbey, and after Kylie Gillies said ‘we have to wait til next year to watch it’ so I’m guessing that means no fasttracking of DA.

    I think it’s the reality shows that need fasttracking the most (TAR, Survivor, etc) because winners and eliminations are mentioned online and in other shows (The Soup and the daytime talk shows). Hoping TAR and Survivor are on the way soon Seven and GO!

  3. @ Kev –

    I think it’s because watching your own PVR-ed recording is allowed, but distributing it to others without permission, or accepting a distributed copy (which is precisely what downloading is) is not allowed.

  4. Surely Terra Nova should be a 6.30 or 7.30 show…Ten have had great success with Merlin at 6.30 and TAYG is now finishing at 7.30…8.30 is not a family-friendly timeslot.

  7. @ Kev : Yeah good point….I guess maybe some idiots would still watch the ads even when they have recorded it so the sponsors still may be getting some benefit out of it.

  8. Yeah that’s all fine for now, but the second any of these shows has a slip in the ratings, they’ll be held back til later in the season, or banished to one of the multichannels. Either way, I don’t trust the commercial nets to stick to it.

  9. if networks do decide to fasttrack a program, they should play the full block 10-12 episodes that air before the mid season break, and not just 6-8 episodes to boost their end of year ratings. People then go and download the remaining episodes that weren’t aired by networks and don’t return for new episodes the following year. If they don’t want to play the full block, then i would prefer they hold over the season until the following year.

    It was very frustrating last year when Seven only showed four new episodes of Bones and Nine showed just three eps of the big bang theory.

  13. Good i was gonna ask if there’s a list of shows we know that are being fast-tracked. Terra Nova looks great so i can’t wait for that. Ten seems to be the best at it, so you would expect them to fasttrack shows, plus they really need it to help ratings. So NCIS, Hawaii Five-O, The Good Wife, House should all be fast-tracked.

    As for Seven I have no faith they will fast-track shows.

    And it’s not as simple as fast-tracking to offset piracy. I want to do the right thing and watch on tv, so if they fast-track I usually will watch. But if they then change timeslot, days, or start at 8.43 when they say 8.30 then i’ll just give up.

  14. “offset piracy”?? …
    No, they just realise they have no chance to get ratings unless they actually do their job and deliver what people want to watch, when they want to watch it, instead of making us wait three/six months … it is not some “holy crusade against piracy”.

    Networks are now forced to adapt to this “brave new world” where popular shows are instantly available to viewers online … it will never go away, so they must get their act together and deliver, for a change!

  15. I really hope from the promos Ten has shown, that the scenes were in a an early stage of CGI production, because the dinosaurs looked terrible, and i mean like something you would see in a tv commercial for cereal. With the money being spent and the fact that it will be more character driven i would expect better special effects than we saw in Jurassic Park, considering that was 19 years ago!

  17. Thanks for the news David, not sure is Sunday against UB is the best slot considering it will air on Mondays in the US. Maybe a mid week time would be better?

    I’m betting Desperate along with Grays and PP will all be held over until Jan 2012.

  18. The recent inclusion of fast tracked US programs into Ten’s schedule is purley a bi-product of the lack of quality programing content and not a strategy to combat piracy.

  21. With fasttracking comes erratic scheduling, bad ratings and a 10 week midseason break over summer that doesn’t line up with the US. I dont think it’s that great. If people want to watch it with the US then there are ways to do that yourself, fasttracking ruins the viewing experience for everyone else.

  22. It’s not really so much the release date/time that affects piracy so much… What leads to piracy is the unreliability of their programming. It’s the fact that channels keep doing one (or all) of three things:

    1) pulling shows before the season completes
    2) moving program timeslots (or channels) around so that a show becomes “unfindable”
    3) airing programs out of production order, or leaving enormous gaps in airing

    The above, as well as the fact that they force viewers to “choose”, by all airing their best shows at the same time. These are the things that lead to the most disillusionment and thence to piracy.

  24. With Survivor starting this week in the US Nine could’ve easily slotted this on GO! in any number of timeslots taken up by TBBT repeats, or with The Voice finished they could’ve put it on Tuesday at 7.30pm but instead decide to show a repeat movie in Yours Mine & Ours. Ridiculous programming.

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