Although the season debut of NBC's Heroes was a disappointing bust Monday night with ratings plummeting 23 percent from last year's season starter, the episode turned out to be an enormous hit among those who watch pirated copies of TV shows online. According to the website TorrentFreak, on Tuesday, the day following the broadcast, Heroes was downloaded "well over a million times by BitTorrent users all over the world." The website observed that the downloads represented "the busiest day ever on many torrent sites." Heroes executive producer Jesse Alexander told the website that he believes the illegal downloads actually helps the show, particularly overseas, building a fan base before it arrives on the air. "People watching shows such as Lost and Heroes on BitTorrent is the present world reality," he said. "TV networks have to recognize this, give their viewers more ways to interact with the shows, and find ways to generate revenue from every member of the global audience,"

25/09/2008