There are no spoilers in this article.
On Monday, The Guardian did a strange thing (yes, what’s new? asks the reader).
They ran a poll, in the Comment is Free section, asking for responses to a question that, in theory, only television viewers in the United States could answer. In fact, viewers of a cable network ‘should’ have been the only respondents.
The poll asked Guardian readers a question related to the finale of the fourth season of Mad Men, which aired on the AMC cable network on Sunday night.
So why were they publishing this poll when Mad Men has reached only episode seven (of thirteen) in its hideaway home on BBC Four? I’m going to throw caution into the gale force wind and suggest that The Guardian had little interest in the way we voted; they simply wanted to count how many voted at all.
Television viewing is beginning to echo the journey of music, or more accurately the music business, in the 2000-2010 decade when Napster led the way to the streaming successes of Spotify and We7, and the DRM free version of iTunes.
Today, the majority of viewers in the United Kingdom still wait, perhaps with increasingly less patience, for the television providers to decide on their behalf, the date and time they will be allowed to watch the ‘can’t miss’ series that has captured their imagination.
In the last year or so, The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, In Treatment, 30 Rock and Mad Men have all appeared in this ‘must see’ category.
However, to comply with the imposed legitimacy of viewing culture, the fan of these shows will have to avoid any interaction with social media that has any sort of hold in the United States. Understandably, many Americans will want to share comments, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, about the finale of a programme that has captured their interest, and, importantly, that of their peers. Any UK viewer, marooned on episode seven of season four, will be very lucky to avoid a spoiler revealing the denouement of Mad Men over the timescale of the remaining six weekly broadcasts.
Increasingly, viewers outside America are becoming more sophisticated in finding ways to watch United States’ television programmes in real time, or download a specific episode immediately after broadcast. Such practices have a resounding echo to the dilemma facing the music customer in the days of Audiogalaxy and Limewire.
This leaves the early viewer or downloader in the grey area between a perceived illegality and the need to avoid the time lapse between the American broadcast date and the delivery on foreign (to the US) television.
ABC and SKY TV became acutely aware of this conundrum and squeezed the time gap between the United States and Europe to a minimum for the closing season of Lost, even airing the show finale simultaneously in both continents.
We must hope that the huge corporations learn the lesson of the folly of chasing down individual downloaders or IP maskers, as the music business learned too late.
In an age where import and export between nations is considered a right and any obstruction a restraint of trade, there is a solid argument for allowing American broadcasters the opportunity to deliver content direct to European audiences.
I do hope The Guardian publishes the number of total votes cast in their quirky poll. Judging by the responses of UK based Twitter account holders, I’m far from being the only British viewer capable of answering that Mad Men question with the authority of one who has viewed the final episode.
Terence Dackombe, October 2010
This week I have been:
Watching The Apprentice and pondering that if these are the best British business prospects, will we ever live to see the recovery of the economy?
Still been reading Stewart Copeland’s memoir (it’s never ending) and noting that on their reunion tour, the only time The Police were all together was on the ride from the hotel to the gig, and on stage.
Listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto Number Three, and the acoustic version of Prefab Sprout’s ‘Steve McQueen’.
Enjoying lunch at the weird but compelling Beatles carvery restaurant near Bray in Berkshire.
