And The YouTube Purge Begins, Starting With Comedy Central

And The YouTube Purge Begins, Starting With Comedy Central

HuffingtonPost/The New York Times reports today that, in prepartion for the giant Google takeover (maybe you heard about it?), YouTube has started purging clips. This time, though, it's clips we actually care about: The beloved Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert clips that whip around the internet on blogs and rack up thousands of views daily. The Times reports that Comedy Central finally got around to sending YouTube a cease and desist letter (the kind that NBC got used to sending after "Lazy Sunday" broke).
From the Times:

The situation is tricky for a network like Comedy Central, part of Viacom. Its audience is young and technologically sophisticated, and Comedy Central stars in the past have used YouTube and clip services to interact with their audience.

No kidding. The Times cites the obvious in Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner, which caught fire on YouTube before C-Span had it removed (though its still easy to find on the site, for example here).
It's an interesting move on the part of Comedy Central, which has seemed to turn a blinde eye until now, to their benefit: Not everyone gets cable, or is home to see every show religiously in the 11 - 12am block. YouTube highlights are wildly popular the next day (almost always cracking the HuffPo's top five news stories), and such clips are popular with random procrastinating surfers as well (which ETP can confirm anecdotally). But the videos are available on Comedy Central's own site, which is fairly user friendly (though not as user friendly as YouTube), and it is only natural that it would want users to go there (recently, it even took out ads on HuffPo in the house style, directing readers to specifc clips).
The Times quotes from Jon Stewart in Wired in Sept/05, regarding the need to balance getting stuff out there with actually having it funded: "If they're not making their money, we ain't doing our show." Not so different, really, than the arguments for and against TimesSelect, really, but here's the other side, from BoingBoing, on "Lazy Sunday" but just as applicable here: "Viral means the stuff has a life of its own, guys, and that's what made it a hit."

In the meantime, while you still can, enjoy this clip of Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem with Stephen Colbert in a wonderfully awkward and intelligently-conceived clip, where the medium really is the message. By the way, this originally ran in late September and hit a blind spot - wasn't mentioned or picked up. They reran it in early October and it caught, with YouTube clips appearing on HuffPo and a number of other blogs. This version has been viewed 36,317 times.