The Bigger Issue with Viacom and Time Warner Cable: International Viewers (you know, those other couple of billion people??)

I posted the following as a comment on NewTeeVee’s post about the disagreement between Viacom and Time Warner Cable regarding an increase in fees… When these retards get their heads out of their arses and figure out what the hell they are doing, maybe they’d like to make some money?!?

Now that the disagreement has been dealt with, let’s get back to the problem millions of people encounter and where the networks are losing millions in potential ad revenue every day: international viewership. Aside from torrents and proxy’s, there are only a handful of sites available (and they are unreliable at best) to watch programs from an IP address located outside the US.

Hulu, FanCast and other third-party sites, as well as every major network site blocks international IP’s due to “licensing” when they could just as easily sell ads (most of the advertisers either sell their items or will ship them overseas and we all know ALL of them are made overseas anyway!!) and make a bundle of money while also increasing the popularity of their shows.

Globalization arrived quite some time ago and yet is seems that companies in the digital space are the last to figure their shit out and get the international licensing deals secured to increase their own viewers/listeners. (The same holds true for the music labels blocking sites like Pandora.com.)

There are more people in China than anywhere else on earth and Viacom, Universal, NBC, etc. are again helping along the business of pirating, torrents, etc. instead of using their heads to both increase their profits AND secure their copyrights for the future.

One addition I should add is that sites including NBC.COM and COMEDYCENTRAL.COM (and their associated Daily Show and Colbert Report sites) USED to allow international IP addresses… What happened?!?