Like many other Sopranos fans outside North America, I was in a bit of a snit yesterday. Because despite all my best efforts to avoid discovering who gets whacked and who doesn't in the final episode of the final series of my favourite television show in the history of the world, the internet managed to ruin the surprise for me within three minutes of waking up yesterday. Thanks a lot, globalisation!
My mistake - like those that usually lead to Sopranos-related tragedies - was a simple one: I subscribe to the news RSS feed of a certain North American newspaper, which I shall not name, because it is now as dead to me to Uncle Junior is to Tony. The plots of fictional television shows are now apparently designated as "news" at said publication, and so a headline appeared in my Bloglines yesterday morning that read: "Tony Soprano [MASSIVE SPOILER THAT RUINS THE SUSPENSE OF THE FINAL EPISODE]". Madon'!
Still, even if I hadn't subscribed to that spoilsport RSS feed, some other online publication would have no doubt pooped on my party eventually. Though I fastidiously avoided North American arts and culture sites and Google News yesterday, I nonetheless stumbled across spoilers to the final season and final episodes in unexpected places like Stereogum, a music blog that wrote about the final episode's soundtrack and noted which songs backed which now-dead characters' wakes, and even UK-based sites like this very arts blog, which gave away the most shocking twist of the final season in the first paragraph of this blog post. (Needless to say, don't click if you don't want to know.)
And I was only trying to avoid finding out about the ending for 18 hours - yes, I'm one of those sinners who has been downloading the final episodes on BitTorrent sites after they air in the States. I can't imagine how anyone is going to be able to make it through the unspecified number of months it will take for Channel 4 to air the final episodes without finding out what happens.
Actually, Globalisation, I'm sorry I took my anger out on you earlier in this blog post. It's not you who is to blame, but television stations like Channel 4 who have ignored you that have left us in this mess. I can't think of any good reason why Britons have to wait until the autumn to legally view the final episode of The Sopranos that North Americans got to watch on Sunday night. Canadian viewers watched the series at the exactly same time as Americans on their local channels, so why not us? Why do big blockbuster movies get released on both sides of the ocean at once, but not big blockbuster TV shows?
Media companies that are still clinging to the old ways are shooting themselves in the foot. When a TV programme - or a movie or a music album - is out there somewhere in the world, it's out there everywhere. And when faced with an internet full of spoilers, people like me will download illegally rather than take the risk and wait. It's time for broadcasters to wise up, before BitTorrent and his crew metaphorically chop their heads off, put them in bowling bags and bury them on an industrial site somewhere in Jersey.
