Distribution
In 2008, House was distributed in a total of 66 countries. With an audience of over 81.8 million worldwide, it was the most watched television show on the globe and far surpassed the viewership figures of the leading TV dramas the previous two years (CSI and CSI: Miami). The following year, it placed second in the world after CSI.
House episodes premiere on Fox in the United States and Global in Canada, which have identical schedules. The show was the third most popular on Canadian television in 2008. That same year, House was the top-rated television program in Germany, the number 2 show in Italy, and number 3 in the Czech Republic. The series is also very popular in France, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, the first four seasons were broadcast on Five. Sky1 acquired first-run rights beginning with season five. The original, English-language version of the show also airs in Australia on Network Ten, in New Zealand on TV3, and in Ireland on 3e, TV3's cable channel.
Episodes of the show are also available online for download: Amazon Video on Demand, iTunes Store and the Zune Marketplace offer episodes from all of seasons 1 through 6, with episodes from the current season (season 7) appearing one week after they air live on television. In 2007, NBC Universal (the show's distributor) and Apple Inc. (iTunes' owner) had a disagreement that temporarily kept the fourth season off iTunes. In a statement to the press, Apple claimed that NBC Universal wanted to drive up the per-episode price to $4.99. In September 2008, it was reported that the issue between Apple and NBC had been resolved. Episodes can now also be purchased in HD on iTunes for $2.99. Recent episodes are available in streaming video on Fox's official House webpage and on Hulu.com.
The first seven seasons of the show were released on DVD encoded for regions 1, 2 and 4. A boxed set comprising seasons one through seven has been issued, as well. Universal Studios Home Entertainment announced plans to rerelease the first season in region 1 in anamorphic widescreen (the original release is letterboxed). It is unclear if the DVDs will be re-released with anamorphic widescreen in regions 2 and 4, where they have been presented in 4:3 fullscreen.
Read more about this topic: House (TV series)
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“There is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? Mor come to the conviction that what seems the succession of thought is only the distribution of wholes into causal series.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)