CW speeds up online TV episode availability to combat piracy

With the authorities cracking down on digital file sharing and piracy all over the world via courts of law, the TV channel CW will begin battling in their own way: CWTV.com will feature newly aired episodes of its programming just eight hours after their original playtime.

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The CW might help to save their own TV and CWTV.com ratings before anyone who misses an awesome show has to go and download or stream it illegally. More and more research points to worldwide pirating taking place on the Internet more as a means for instant entertainment, when shows or movies are withheld from consumers, than as malicious profiteering.

In order to pull in viewers from this enormous audience of pirates, the full episodes of CW shows, like America’s Next Top Model, 90210, and The Vampire Diaries, will be available to watch online at Hulu Plus and CWTV.com one quarter of a 24 hour day after the program originally aired.

The decision comes on the heels of a test of the eight-hour gap that CW quietly conducted with some affiliates in four markets between October and January. There was no change in broadcast ratings in those markets and a slight increase on CWTV.com.

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"It tells us that when you present next-day streaming, those who want to stream will be more predisposed to watching on CWTV.com or Hulu Plus than a pirate site," said Rick Haskins, exec VP of marketing and digital programs at CW. "It also shows it didn't really change the broadcast numbers."

This eight-hour window matches that of Apple and Hulu Plus, though it might hurt the company’s C3 numbers of views of the show using DVR systems.

CW has already seen a twenty percent TV ratings drop from this time last year – though poor writing and awful programming content could be a factor in this – and now the network hopes to win over some the numerous file sharing or TV streaming pirate community.

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Sites like TVShack that provide a link to specific episodes of TV shows and movies have taken a lot of heat lately from US authorities vying to shut down copyright infringers.

But CW is taking a new approach by giving the sparsely advertised episodes to their viewers, online, for free. They just have to hope that this corrals in enough people to stop the bleeding before watching TV on TV becomes too blasé and a forgotten pastime.

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