The PBS geo-blocking is reasonable to understand. Video streaming can get expensive and international delivery almost certainly isn't in the foundation's stated mission at this point. Things also get complicated when you consider that PBS is not just one non-profit, but many "member stations", each operated as a separate non-profit. It's not their main objective navigate through the difficult task of making international streaming pay for itself (i.e. through correctly targeted ad partnerships or additional fund-raising). It's easier to just block it.
But back to the numbers: I'd estimate that PBS is paying around $0.05 per show to stream. I'm basing this on CDN costs in the range $0.10/GB - $0.20/GB, the size of 30 minute shows weighing in between 125MB and 250MB, plus storage and admin overheads. I might be wrong, but it looks like they're delivering their bits via CloudFront[1] and so those costs basically double for viewers outside of the US and Europe[2]. Even if it's not CloudFront, the basic cost structures stay the same. Why on earth would they want to serve content to users who mostly aren't giving them money and are costing twice as much to serve?
One last point: the link below are for Downtown Abbey, for which PBS certainly doesn't have international streaming rights.
>I'd estimate that PBS is paying around $0.05 per show to stream. I'm basing this on CDN costs in the range $0.10/GB - $0.20/GB, the size of 30 minute shows weighing in between 125MB and 250MB, plus storage and admin overheads.
If they actually own the rights to the show they want to distribute to the public for free and the primary thing stopping them is the cost of a CDN, why aren't they using BitTorrent? At least as an option that says "no CDN in your country, international users use this"?
My guess it that PBS still needs to control distribution of their content because it is still a valuable source of fund-raising revenue. Revenue from DVD box sets [1] and international licensing deals goes back into producing new shows. Setting their content free on BitTorrent would quickly erode the revenue generating potential of that content.
The purpose of PBS is to take donations and public money and produce free content. I have a hard time believing that there are a lot of people who would buy a PBS DVD box set but decide not to because it was available on the internet -- especially since it's already available for free on the internet in their primary market, just not world-wide. Moreover, if they distribute using BitTorrent, they can include the usual "if you enjoy this program, please support it with a financial contribution" message, in which case the wider the programs are distributed the more people see the message and the more money gets donated.
The example I linked in another comment (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-stonehenge.html) is blocked in Europe, despite your pricing data showing that it would cost PBS the same to deliver there as in the US. So I'm not convinced it's about delivery cost.
For clarity, let's not talk about Downton Abbey--that's a more complicated topic because it's not PBS-produced content as far as I know.
>Price Classes let you reduce your delivery prices by excluding Amazon CloudFront’s more expensive edge locations from your Amazon CloudFront distribution.
Sounds to me like it's completely trivial to restrict streaming to the cheap servers and everyone else will just have to cross more of the internet to get there. I seriously doubt that this is a notable part of their reasoning.
But back to the numbers: I'd estimate that PBS is paying around $0.05 per show to stream. I'm basing this on CDN costs in the range $0.10/GB - $0.20/GB, the size of 30 minute shows weighing in between 125MB and 250MB, plus storage and admin overheads. I might be wrong, but it looks like they're delivering their bits via CloudFront[1] and so those costs basically double for viewers outside of the US and Europe[2]. Even if it's not CloudFront, the basic cost structures stay the same. Why on earth would they want to serve content to users who mostly aren't giving them money and are costing twice as much to serve?
One last point: the link below are for Downtown Abbey, for which PBS certainly doesn't have international streaming rights.
[1] http://video.pbs.org/videoPlayerInfo/2335534842
[2] http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/