Piracy is a bigger issue than ever for the TV industry, despite it being talked about less, according to one of the US’s top cable executives.
Paul Buccieri, president of US channels A+E and History, told the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival that the industry needs to keep up its efforts to tackle people illegally watching content.
“When I worked at Fox, Peter Chernin, who was ahead of his time, really banged on about piracy and stealing content,” he said. “To me, it’s as big an issue now, probably even bigger. The monetisation of these shows helps us produce new shows and keeps us all employed.
“I think we should push harder on that. It’s sort of gone down in the conversation, and it’s even more tricky now with digital.”
Illegal downloading and streaming is particularly rife with big budget shows and dramas. The fifth series of HBO’s Game of Thrones broke records when the first four episodes were leaked and downloaded more than 32m times.
Jane Turton, managing director of UK production company All3 Media, said they had seen some success making sure content wasn’t downloaded illegally.
She said: “We talked about it endlessly, and it’s sort of slightly fallen off our agenda. Maybe part of the problem is making things available more freely on various platforms and maybe monetising better.”
“We’re quite now successful at claiming content, we’ve found ways to montise content put up illegally or take it down.”
