As someone with money who enjoys a lot of American TV, I'm not really interested in excuses why these services are not available worldwide.
Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt.
If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.
The delay in geographical releases is because studios license the copyrights to a regional studio or a distribution company.
Unfortunately, this arrangements prohibits them to use any alternate distribution channels to release the content on their own. Also, the regional company is unlikely to have any arrangements with services like Netflix and Hulu.
In the end its all about the money and bureaucracy.
Am I right to presume that this system with regional licences was set up by the studios themselves? What stops a studio from skipping their regional partners and just release their content worldwide?
The internet doesn't really know regions, so local distribution partners are no longer a concern (Except maybo for localizing content).
Are they losing money? If you canabalize your existing revenue stream by destroying distributor relationships in exchange for a new revenue stream that is tiny, you will lose money. Contrary to popular belief, most of the people making lots of money as executives are not stupid. They just have more data than the arm-chair quarterbacks have. What seems 'obvious' to us hackers is not always as clear cut when you have the numbers in front of you.
I am sure they do. But they have to rely on such distribution deals to make most revenue. They won't be able to distribute via main stream mediums like movie theaters and TV channels on their own because of extensive offshore logistics.
What do you do in the case where a show is shown on ABC in the US and Channel 4 in the UK, and they both have online streaming? How do you just make that happen? Who is going to give up their rights to broadcast online? Are you just going to wish the contracts away? Yes, the torrenters have no problem avoiding the legal limits because they are illegal, that's not an answer.
Make a new territory called "Internet" which charges viewers directly. If a UK broadcaster wants the UK rights, that would still be available separately. People who would pay a premium aren't really in the same market as people who watch free-with-ads channels.
I know channel 4 etc won't like having a competitor with the same shows on their turf, but they do already - torrenters. At least this way, the competitor will just be one that charges a premium that will only be used by big fans of a show. The casual viewer will remain with the free-with-ads channel.
There are several cases where this happens already. Many TV shows/films are licensed to Irish and British TV stations, however many people in Ireland get BBC et al, so these people can see it twice. Everyone is happy with this system.
Thank you for putting forth this sentiment in a succinct and direct way. If it can be done while being borderline illegal why in the world would the stakeholders not want to profit from this revenue stream?
Quit making excuses and make it happen. The torrenters don't seem to have any trouble building a global distribution network, and they are hiding from the law while simultaneously kicking your butt.
If you don't want to make it happen, quit whining about losing money. I have money and you have TV shows, so let's make a deal.