TV goes Torrent

Yesterday Torrent Freak reported on Norwegian State TV embracing BitTorrent to distribute their own TV shows.

There are a number of interesting things to note:
NRK’s Erik Solheim is reported as saying,“With our own tracker we will get better statistics and gather important data about how this technology works.”
Measurement

“This type of distribution is reliable, cheap and popular with our audience,” Solheim told TorrentFreak. “The main problem is the rights issues. We hope to be able to make television shows with a creative commons license in the future. That will make it easier for us to allow full freedom for our audience”.
Sharing/adding value.

“It is important for us to start experimenting with new distribution methods. We don’t want to do like the music industry. Running around thinking that people will keep driving down to a record store when they can have the content delivered with the push of a button at home,” Eirik Solheim said in an interview last year.
Working with the audience they way they consume media.

Currently the BBC has iPlayer and ABC has iView – both terrific services but still with some limitations from a user point of view (e.g. limited windows of availability). With all three of these services being offered by State owned channels it will be interesting to see what, if anything, commercial networks can adopt from these content management models. You would think they would watch very carefully given that at least one TV station in this country has already been valued at $0.

Looking at the points highlighted above, Measurement, Sharing/adding value, and working with audience consumption habits, and adding on other online support for their material (websites. forums etc) has NRK just set up the ultimate social media campaign for itself?

Ultimately it is another move away from the broadcast mentality and moving to a more fluid definition of what TV actually is. It’s a move away from platform significance to platform agnostic media brands.

(Image by: dailyinvention)