Game of Thrones is the most downloaded show on TV right now for obvious reasons: it’s on HBO. Actually, that’s about it — unless you have an HBO subscription, it’s impossible to see their programming on legal streaming sites like Hulu or Netflix. Hence, as many next-day tsk tsk GoT downloads as times Jon Snow has been told he knows nothing. And yet, according to Game of Thrones director David Petrarca, they don’t give a dragon’s ass.
At the Perth Writer’s Festival this past weekend, Game of Thrones director David Petrarca downplayed the threat of piracy to the show’s success, saying that illegal downloads don’t matter since shows thrive on “cultural buzz.” As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, Petrarca shrugged when a panel mediator noted that Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012; the show was downloaded about 3.9 million times per episode, which was more than a million downloads per episode more than the second-most pirated show How I Met Your Mother. “That’s how they survive,” he said. (Via)
“Cultural buzz” is both good and bad. It’s what keeps HBO from caring about people watching their shows for free, but it’s why stories like “SETH MACFARLANE RUINS THE OSCHERS” and “GIRLS THINK PIECE #17″ stay in the news for days, too. It’s also the name of Lena Dunham’s vibrator.
