CBC gives away Next Great Leader via P2P

Canadian public broadcaster the CBC is set to offer its primetime format Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister via Bittorrent for free.

It will become the first network in North America to offer its shows via peer-to-peer for free following successful trials by Norwegian public broadcaster NRK.

The show, which is distributed by Distraction Formats and has also been sold as a format to the BBC, is a competitive reality series that follows a number of aspiring politicians aged between 18 and 25 as they debate their way to the title of Next Great Leader.

Viewers will be able to download the show completely free of DRM after its initial broadcast on March 24. CBC is also making a version available for video iPod users.

Norwegian pubcaster NRK was the first broadcaster to offer shows in this form and found that the technology, which means downloaders share the files between each other, saved massive bandwidth costs.