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TECHNO ROBBER BARONS
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Regular readers of this column -- exactly 11 at last count, including family members -- will know of my love affair with the HBO television series The Wire. Fans of my radio appearances (shameless plug: The Show on ThatRadio.com, Monday nights, 8-10 pm) are aware that I have been away for the past couple weeks. During that time, the final episode ever of my all-time favourite show came and went.
Not being a complete technological Luddite, I prepared for that confluence of events by programming my DVD player to download the episode. The plan was to watch, marvel and begin the mourning process of losing a dear friend as soon as I dropped my bags at the door and could click on the TV. What I didn’t factor in, however, was the arrival of daylight savings time in the wee hours of the day The Wire’s swan song was scheduled. Yep, the clocks sprung ahead an hour. Back in the day, last year to be exact, the DVD recorder would’ve automatically readjusted to accommodate the time change and no one would be the wiser. However, the early implementation of DST was beyond the scope of the machine’s antiquated hard drive, and by antiquated I mean 3 years old. In short, I returned home SOL with but a fraction of the show downloaded onto the hard drive.
My obsessive, 5 season attachment to a television series we’ll be hard pressed to see the likes of ever again ends up smashed and broken on the rocky shoals of a computer glitch.
Coming to with a very serious goose egg over my left eye when I bounced off the corner of the television set after fainting, I frantically started searching for signs of an encore airing. Broadcast on a premium cable channel, the show usually plays a number of times throughout the week but it slowly, horrifically dawned on me that in fact, the ship had sailed, the train had left the station, my window of opportunity had closed and wouldn’t open again until the network began showing the season again in April. By my calculations, the final episode wouldn’t be available until mid-June or so.
Hopping onto the HBO website (The Wire’s home network), I saw that American fans of the show had almost daily access to the final episode while up here, north of the 49th,we were left wallowing in the dark. Even the Canadian broadcasters On Demand section came up empty, telling me that no future airings of the final episode were scheduled. Exactly how is that on demand? If someone promises that you can watch whatever you want whenever you want but only according to their set timetable, how is that by any stretch of the imagination on demand? Despite already paying a good chunk of change for this premium channel, I’d be willing to dish out even more if I could simply dial up and order the episode I had missed.
Surely we have achieved an advanced stage of technology where, with the right equipment and a willingness to pay, we can access any available movie or television series to watch at our leisure. If it had been an episode of Corner Gas or Lost, I could most certainly download it for a fee onto my iPod. This doesn’t seem to be the case with a show like The Wire. It turns out that full-on consumer demand still bows at the feet of corporate profit maximization.
Of course there is a working On Demand model up and running that more than a few people are using to view what they want when they want. It’s called the Internet. But, just like the music industry, unless the movie and television industries sanction it, they call it piracy. In principle, I’m not one to disagree. As a content provider myself (be it ever so humble), I am not deaf to the argument that illegal downloads steals from the artist. When I finally embraced the move to MP3 digital music a few years ago, I purposefully avoided the illegal file sharing business that was running rampant at the time. I wasn’t, however, adverse to ripping songs from the occasional burned CD as a kind of throwback to the ancient ways of borrowing LPs and putting them onto cassette tapes like we once did shortly after emerging from the caves.
That’s not to say it wasn’t tempting to pad my music collection without having to fork over exorbitant amounts of money for CDs that cost a fraction of what it took to produce and manufacture. The business side of the music industry had it coming, rolling in dough from artificially inflated prices that could no longer be rationalized aside from anything other than gouging. I’m amazed how many musicians still choose to remain under the thumbs of record labels and distributors instead of breaking free and reaping far more of the financial rewards owed them as Radiohead attempted to do with their latest CD. (Selfless plug: I stumbled across the Minneapolis based band, Cloud Cult, a little way back and now download their music directly from their website.)
While a more complicated economic model than the music industry, the film and television business seems equally content to drag its feet when it comes to taking the necessary steps toward the modern digital age. It’s not that they can’t. They won’t, at least until they’ve brought in a team of actuarialists who parse and dissect until they can package up distribution models that are less about consumer convenience than relieving them of as much money as possible. Instead of creating easy access to channels and programs people want, mind-numbing superfluousness of choice is foisted upon us.
Once the protectors of Canadian identity, our regulators now stand idly by, safeguarding the industry’s turf and allowing virtual free reign with viewers. Under the guise of maintaining our cultural sovereignty, HBO is kept from invading our air space while broadcasters who carry HBO programming aren’t obligated to provide the same level of access as American viewers receive. So, if some dunderhead, who can’t reliably download a show that may be vital to his very well-being screws up, he is left to the mercy of companies who have little incentive to deliver the goods outside of their set schedule.Sensing my loss, a number of friends -- much more tech savvy than I -- quickly offered a few “non-official” ways for me to watch the final episode of The Wire at my earliest convenience. To take them up on this, I risk becoming an outlaw, an information highwayman, a Napster-like blackguard. The authorities leave me little choice. Do we blame the penniless mother who steals a loaf of bread for her starving children? No. Up to now, I have been dutiful in adhering to the rules. Lawlessness is forced upon me by those who, when it comes to dollars, cents and fairness, are the real pirates in this equation.
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