EDITORIAL: Of Cable and The Clone Wars
Thursday, March 24th, 2011 at 2:09 pm Category: Cartoons, Clone Wars, Editorial, Opinion and Editorial, Star Wars, Top, [adult swim]I cover The Clone Wars a lot. Many, many people come here to read news about the show, interviews with the creators and voices, and my opinions about the episodes. And by far and away, the question I get asked most often is “What website can I watch The Clone Wars on?”
I don’t like that question because I know that what they’re really asking is: “Where can I download it, I can’t find a torrent.”
I always politely tell them that it’s available the next morning on iTunes for a small fee in glorious HD and that’s far and away the best place to watch it. After that, the two most recent episodes are available on StarWars.com for free. And then I remind them (with links to Amazon!) that the first two seasons are available on DVD and Blu-ray.
To my mind, piracy is wrong. I want to watch this show through legitimate means to support it as best I can and I want others to do the same.
Sometimes, there’s nothing that can be done about it, though, as wrong as it is. Take for instance the Season Finale of The Clone Wars. The first half of it has already aired in the UK. Can you imagine how many links that have been sent to me to download this episode? It’s everywhere. And can you blame people for wanting to see it as soon as possible? This is hands down the best show on television and we’re teased over and over again with it. And it’s not like the presentation suffers from downloading all that much. I’ve been offered HD quality video and my cable isn’t even HD.
But it begs the question, why aren’t they coordinating the air dates around the world to be the same day? That single thing will prevent piracy more than anything.
But that’s not exactly what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the disparity in timezones in our modern Internet culture and why I’m canceling my Comcast (Xfinity?) cable subscription.
First of all, for some reason cable providers in Salt Lake City have Cartoon Network (and Comedy Central) set far later than anywhere else in the country. The Clone Wars doesn’t air until 9:30 pm Mountain Standard Time in Salt Lake City (and the rest of Utah.) That’s a full 3 hours after it airs on the East Coast. And because we all live online and timezones mean much less unless you’re dealing with business hours I have to completely shut off Twitter and Facebook and everything else because I don’t want to know about the episode. (New episodes of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report don’t even start until midnight. Same with Robot Chicken and Adult Swim.)
Thanks to DVRs and Instant Streaming timezones are now completely irrelevant in broadcast programming.
So if I were Lucasfilm, I’d work hard with the UK distributor of The Clone Wars to make sure that they aren’t airing anything too much before the US. And if I’m Cartoon Network, I would insist that the airing of the show at the very least match the timezone disparity, but in the best case scenario have it playing simultaneously around the country.
And while this is incredibly annoying, this isn’t why I’m canceling my cable subscription either. The truth is I pay well over $60 a month for the most basic cable package a from Comcast that will afford me Cartoon Network. And it’s far too much to pay PER MONTH for one show. I have my internet. I have Netflix. I have Amazon. I have a Blu-ray player. I have an iTunes account. Though it will force me to write my reviews of The Clone Wars the next morning instead of the night of, I have no need for basic cable and I can’t afford $60 a month to watch just the one show.
Perhaps I’d consider keeping basic cable if it were a’la carte. Where I could pick up my local stations, Cartoon Network, BBC, Comedy Central, and Disney for…say… $9.99 per month? That would make it just about worth it for me to keep. But until then, all they’ll get from me is my Internet subscription.
And after next week’s Season Finale of The Clone Wars, unless iTunes gets simultaneous releases with the show, you’ll just have to wait for my reviews of The Clone Wars until Saturday morning.
Cable providers and cable stations need to better understand the consumption habits and desires of their consumers, otherwise we’re all going to be canceling our subscriptions.
Responses to “EDITORIAL: Of Cable and The Clone Wars”
Hear Hear!!!
Yes to all points. Also, YouTube had several of channels with Padawan Lost and none were taken down.
I have Dish Network so I get two feeds of cartoon network but last year I had to shut off all social media so I could watch Mad Men and Walking Dead in peace.
As for picking and choosing channels, they are all owned by companies that force the cable companies to take the whole package. So we get a bunch of bullshit nobody cares about. Comcast is till to blame for that since they own a portion of the channels themselves. Bastards…all of em.
Comedy Central and Cartoon Network and a couple of other turner based cable networks actually changed their viewing schedule for MST about 12 years ago to where it is now being 1 hour after eastern or 3 hours from the actual airing. It drove me absolutely nuts in high school when adult swim first came into popularity and kids my age in other time zones were able to watch it when I had to tape it to watch it. I never really understood the reason behind that switch and they’ve never bothered to change it back.
This is similar to my issues with Batman: Brave & the Bold. I’ve been waiting for the Bat-Manga and Marvel Family episodes forever. They’ve aired, just not in the States. I’m (im)patiently waiting until I can buy them in HD on Amazon, but the longer it takes, the more appealing Usenet can be. I haven’t succumbed yet, but… jeeze, take a page from the BBC’s book and release a show simultaneously everywhere.
The a la carte concept is actually protected by the FCC. It goes back decades to fair access to programming as part of monopoly prevention in communications. Essentially, the government tells Comcast (or any other service provider) they have to provide packages of channels that include a QVC, PBS or some other less interesting channel for each Comedy Central, Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, etc. Otherwise, new or less funded channels would not be picked up by subscribers and given a shot at fair competition.
I actually agree with the fundamental concept, but I think it can be and should be revised. DISH is one service that is trying to create more, smaller packages so you can pick and choose a little easier. I think this could be done even better, and would benefit from less FCC oversight.
The bottom line is, and Swank addresses it very well, is that all media is now needing to rethink the way they do business. This is the same thing the record companies had to do after Napster nearly ruined them. The world is a different place, how can you maintain relevance in this new environment? Using governmental or economic heavy-handing is no longer a useful tool. Our culture no longer needs to accept it.
Or to add to what Baldassbot is saying, this is like in 1997-98 someone coming to the record companies and saying “In 2-3 years Napster is going to happen and it’s going to severely kick you in the balls. Be prepared to change your distribution model.”
And really, Napster/music pirating has never truly gone away. But what happened was iTunes- for so many customers they just wanted to buy the single mp3 rather than a whole CD, and it was easier to pirate than to buy legally…
It’s basically a mathematical formula: As soon as it becomes less of a hassle to pirate than to buy legally, and if the black market is giving consumers the choices they want that the regular market isn’t, piracy becomes inevitable.
I only still have cable for one reason, and that’s cable news. I need CNN for times like these with the Japanese earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster. Otherwise I’d probably go with a Roku box and a combo of Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, Amazon, etc.
You can watch Clone Wars episode on StarWars.com as well. It doesn’t have any ads on it and it contains behind the scenes videos that aren’t seen on the DVD sets.
I only watched the bootleg of Padawan Lost because I’m going to miss it when it airs (though I plan to DVR and watch it again after I come back).
I have no idea why your local cable would run CN that late. I watch CW at 8:30 p.m. PST. I’m fine with staying off social media; that’s what happens when you live west of the EST/CST. But if CN were to run CW ONLY at 8:30 p.m. EST, well, an awful lot of people are parked on the freeway trying to get home at that time, including kids getting picked up from school or day care.