[coob]

With the later seasons of Lost, Sky One (UK) aired the newest episodes the night after their US premiere, supposedly to cut down on Sky losing viewers to pirating.

Anecdotally, it worked.

[Kudos]

They aired Battlestar Galactica a few hours ahead of the US. I'd imagine the narrower gap put an even deeper impact into piracy.

[rmc]

Actually BSG was aired in the UK a few months before the USA. Season 1 started in October 2004 in UK and January 2005 in USA.

People in the USA must have pirated it loads before it was shown on TV. And yet the TV numbers were still very impressive. This is evidence that piracy doesn't affect sales/viewing figures.

[rickmb]

Dutch TV aired BSG months later.

Result: everybody that wanted to see the show had already pirated it, and the viewing figures were miserable.

This has happened with several popular shows.

[rmc]

Wonder what makes it different? The USA AFAIK had good viewership figures.

[justincormack]

No one in the US would expect tohave to pirate a US program from abroad before first run. In the rest of the world it is just routine.