Last year, a pilot was made for a TV show based on Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, a series of one-shot stories about a worldwide organization of on-call specialists who take down threats to humanity. JMS would have been involved if it had been picked up. It didn’t make it to the air, though it was shopped around. And a few months ago, the pilot was leaked onto the internet, becoming wildly popular. This morning, Ellis posted the following remark in his email newsletter, Bad Signal:

It’s my current understanding that the bittorrenting of GLOBAL FREQUENCY has rendered it as dead as dead can get as a TV series. It seems that people in high places did not take kindly to the leak. I have no further details, so don’t ask.

Nice going, guys.

Sure, you can put the immediate blame on the suits who didn’t like being proved wrong about the show’s appeal… but it also reminds me of when the creators of Battlestar Galactica practically begged their fans to wait a few weeks and watch it on TV instead of downloading it off the net so that they’d get high enough ratings to be renewed.

For now, the only way to get Global Frequency remains the original, collected into two volumes: Planet Ablaze and Detonation Radio.