Streaming services

I spoke with a collegue at work yesterday and found that a Swedish ISP (Bredbandsbolaget) is working together with a small company in Sweden to develop a movie streaming service (Voddler). The news (in Swedish) about it so far is that it will be similar to an other Swedish streaming service called Spotify. Which in my opinion would be great as I love Spotify. Something that is still lacking though is a streaming service for TV shows, there are of course a few in the US (Hulu is one good example) but unfortunately they are developed with a very national focus, as in they are only accessible from within the USA.

There are at least a few interesting things that spring to mind here. Firstly, why is Sweden the only country that seem interested in developing these services on an international scale. This is interesting to me as we are also currently considered to be the filesharing pirate haven of the world (because of The Pirate Bay) by the media conglomerates. Don't the companies in the US (as an example) understand that they miss out on a huge market by not developing these kind of services and streaming their content across the globe? As an example can be mentioned sites such as TV.com where TV show fans come and discuss shows and also try to stop the cancelling of shows such as Jericho the other year. The network gave the show an other chance but because the number of viewers were to few they still cancelled. What I don't think they understood is that most of the people that were against the cancelling of that show didn't show up in the sweeps for that show as they were most likely not watching the show legally for the simple reason that they couldn't.

An other interesting thing that ties in to the first one is why hasn't the actors and writers and people working in the business been pushing harder for services like these. Spotify pay the copyright holder every time a tune is played on their service. Think about it, every time somebody watches an old episode of ... Doogie Howser the service would pay the copyright holder for it. I bet Neil Patrick Harris wouldn't mind that (if he gets even a dime of it of course, what do I know?).

Anyway, here is at least one person eagerly awaiting a streaming service that I can stream both day old tv episodes and 20 year old tv episodes from mainly the American networks but also from UK networks and national networks. Because if it's one thing the Americans do well it's TV.