South Park goes online

THE CREATORS of the hit TV show South Park have struck a deal to bring the show online from 2008 - but without really solving the problems they themselves identified with online content services.

The story was broken in the New York Times , which revealed that a website, SouthParkStudios.com, will "create a hub to spread South Park-related material across the Net, mobile platforms, and video games."

Think new clips, highlights, shorts, games, mobile phone downloads, etc.

Matt Stone, one of the creators of the series, tells the NYT reporter that "If I'm overseas and have to get an episode right away,” Mr. Stone lamented, “you literally have to go to an illegal download site."

This is true. Guess what? This deal won't change that. Does Stone realise this?

The big hit of the deal is that Trey Parker and Stone, the creators, will get a 50/50 revenue share on online ad sales, the first talent deal of this kind struck with a major studio. But US advertisers - where they'll be making the money - don't want traffic from outside the US, as it's relatively worthless. Copyright problems also pose a problem for citizens that can't be smacked over the head with the DMCA.

So even if Comedy Central, the show's distributors, do go the whole hog and put new South Park episodes up on the website to stream simultaneously with TV broadcast - and let's be clear, nowhere in any of the literature does it say that they intend to go this far - even if they do, non-US viewers are almost certain to be excluded from those able to watch, as is the case now with the ABC website and Lost/Desperate Housewives - and, for that matter, with all the for-purchase TV content on iTunes, which includes South Park.

You can also bet your butt that any original content on the site will be DRMd up the butt, making sure that nobody without a Windows system gets anywhere near anything.

For all the net-savvy that this new deal shows, nothing is more apparent than the fact that TV studios are still thinking national, not international. Unfortunately for Stone, if he's abroad and wants to see the new South Park, illegal download sites are still going to be the only option.

As Kyle himself would say, "You b*stards!" µ