How to offer a new show online. For free. — Televised Revolution

Last week on the Televised Revolution Podcast, we discussed CBC’s plans to distribute their new series Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister online via bittorrent (DRM-free, no less). We’re mighty impressed that a public broadcaster has sought to experiment with their distribution systems, especially via bittorrent — a distribution mode best known for illegal file sharing.

It seems CBC have taken this one step further. Not only have they gone with the illegal file sharing technology, but they have officially aligned themselves with Mininova, one of the biggest torrent distribution sites around. Mininova are offering the completely legal program HERE.

Additionally, if you’re curious about the process involved in one of the young turks at CBC convincing a traditional broadcaster to undergo a radical shift in their distribution methods, I recommend taking a gander at Last100.com for a synopsis.

It will be interesting to see whether Canada’s public broadcaster considers this to be a success and whether our own public broadcaster, the ABC, adopt a similar distribution method in the future. Surely content like The Chaser would make for an ideal candidate to trial this distribution method. Surely it would make better sense than their restrictive and simply adequate ABC Playback service, of which got a serving by Crikey today.