Media Scribbler

Even thought “Heroes” may not have burned up the airwaves Monday with record ratings, NBC execs can rest assured that their show is being watched. Kinda.

TorrentFreak says that Mininova, which is possibly the biggest P2P tracker in the world, got 10 million downloads in a single day. The increase is presumed to be mostly because of “Heroes”. Other BitTorrent trackers reported similar jumps for Monday.

Stats from TorrentFreak say that, across all BitTorrent sites, the two episodes from “Heroes’” season opening were downloaded well over a million times each.

The folks at NBC and Hulu really shouldn’t be too upset, because 92 percent of the downloads came from outside the U.S., where eps air months after America and Hulu restricts viewing of their streams. So for the most part, Americans presumably saw the show legally. 

Undoubtably, that will be seen as a reason to restrict overseas P2P access. But this should be a bit of a lesson — one that British networks BBC and ITV should also learn in the process.

There’s been no hit on ratings for shows that start in one country and then air later in others. “Torchwood” has been the biggest hit BBC America has had, and only a fraction of its viewers had never seen it before it aired there. “Heroes” has done very well un the U.K. (where the new season is set to premiere Oct. 1) but 15 percent of the P2P downloads came from there on Monday. 

It’s impossible and really offensive to assume that fans will patiently wait for the networks’ whims on scheduling foreign shows. Nor should networks discount the free publicity that fans who see shows early can add to the promotional equation.

As mentioned before, NBC has a new ratings metric that uses views through Hulu and on-demand video. Don’t be shocked if after networks finally learn that they can’t stop P2P sharing, they add that to the equation.

(Logo — NBC Photo)

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