Well that’s why you BitTorrent it

Nine did well out of it - 1.3 mil rating without Melbourne is quite impressive. I too suspect there was a bit of orchestration around this, though they would have to deal with peeved advertisers finding out they paid top dollar for the timeslot with no access to the Melb market (Nine heartland).

@Michael Meloni: The Aust Family Association had an angle on this? Let me guess… portraying criminals as “real people” rather than demons?

@Bernard: Ackland certainly makes sense. Rather than pretending to be able to find people who know nothing, just take that into account and work with it.

And I agree with everyone who points out that if there wasn’t the ban, most of the downloaders wouldn’t have bothered with it.

“If the institution is to survive, the law will have to accept a more Middle Ages view of jurors - they know stuff.”

Honestly, I just have no interest in tuning in. Thirteen episodes means thirteen weeks of devotion to Nine. accck.

Really, did nobody at Nine foresee ‘Underbelly’ might be banned? If ‘Underbelly’ was a .mpg file of, say, an amusing pet cat, we’d be saying it had ‘gone viral’. Has the ban stimulated disproportionate interest, and therefore become a blessing in disguise for Nine? Do the downloaded versions still contain commercials? When hypotheses compete, I usually favour ‘cock-up’ over ‘conspiracy’, but sometimes I wonder….