> But for some, the financial toll is enormous. Shan Chandrasekar, the president of the Asian Television Network, the Toronto-based operator of 54 channels that show everything from Bollywood movies to cricket matches, said his company has been financially gutted by piracy.
> In 2011, he said ATN had its best year, earning revenues of more than $26 million. That number plummeted to just $9 million last year due to a long, slow decline in subscribers.
> He said popular channels from overseas that ATN was paying high licence fees and royalties to broadcast in Canada were being pirated "left, right and centre."
> "Piracy became rampant from the year 2012 onwards, and in the year 2017 it spread like wildfire," he said.
That's a LOT of crying for an exec in an industry that's seen massive growth over the last decade+. I don't buy for a second that piracy has blown up since 2017. This sounds like a skill issue and way to cover his ass.
I'm unsure about the Canadian market particularly but i can name half a dozen people I know personally who have "Steaming boxes". Most are tech illiterate so I doubt they fully know what it is or how they work but I'm sure they know its illegal.
Piracy isn't as rampant as the Kazza/Limewire days but it seems to have taken off again in a big way.
Maybe splitting everything off in to 12 different services and plastering ads over the top of the lot wasn't the masterful MBA plan it first seemed.
> Maybe splitting everything off in to 12 different services and plastering ads over the top of the lot wasn't the masterful MBA plan it first seemed.
I suspect they're still extracting more money from the population than they would have with the previous model. My impression is that many people are now paying 2x what a Netflix subscription for a single service that covers a fraction of the content, and many even have more than one service.
Piracy cuts into those profits but probably not enough to make up for the massive price increases and fragmentation.
> In 2011, he said ATN had its best year, earning revenues of more than $26 million. That number plummeted to just $9 million last year due to a long, slow decline in subscribers.
> He said popular channels from overseas that ATN was paying high licence fees and royalties to broadcast in Canada were being pirated "left, right and centre."
> "Piracy became rampant from the year 2012 onwards, and in the year 2017 it spread like wildfire," he said.
That's a LOT of crying for an exec in an industry that's seen massive growth over the last decade+. I don't buy for a second that piracy has blown up since 2017. This sounds like a skill issue and way to cover his ass.