Slashdot Log In
Viacom Puts the Daily Show Archive Online
Posted by
Zonk
on Thu Oct 18, 2007 04:31 PM
from the lewis-black-catches-it-for-a-segment-we-call-back-in-black dept.
from the lewis-black-catches-it-for-a-segment-we-call-back-in-black dept.
tburton writes "Viacom has put the entire eight year run of the Daily Show with John Stewart online. The content is available from the official Daily Show site, and features clip rating, tags, and numerous community features. The whole thing is supported by relatively unobtrusive contextual ads. 'Viacom's decision to post its entire archive--while fighting YouTube in the courts--sets the scene for a battle between the established media players and their high profile entertainment brands against the user generated content sites, most notable YouTube. Also watching closely the Viacom experiment will be the telco IPTV industry which has seen the market place change rapidly as the quality of online video continues to improve, with at least one platform/site, Vimeo, already offering 1280X720 HD quality direct from the browser.'"
Related Stories
[+]
Games: Eight Years of Games On the Daily Show 22 comments
In the wake of the release of eight years of Daily Show clips onto the internet, Joystiq has done us the great favour of tracking down almost every game reference during the show's run. Check out the embedded videos to see John Stewart talk Pac-man in Baghdad, Ice Cube's enthusiasm for the Dreamcast, and Lewis Black's take on DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball
[+]
MTV Takes on P2P by Making South Park Free 206 comments
thefickler writes "MTV Networks, the biggest division of Viacom Inc., has announced plans to make every South Park episode available online for free as part of a plan to make the show available to a larger audience." This is apparently largely because of the success of a similar project where they put every episode of The Daily Show on-line a few months back. This action didn't hurt ratings, and it may have actually helped them.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
But because people are obviously interested in this medium and they are pissed that Viacom is being a bunch of fucking litigious bastards, they had to do something... We'll see just how it stacks up but based on the other networks' actions, I doubt it will be nearly as popular as the content available in one place - YouTube.
I realize they want to control the content they own and all, but seriously, isn't it just easier to have someone else foot the bandwidth bills and to have your viewership get it the way they want? They will never learn
Re:They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Uhhh, yeah, I'm all about "sticking it to the man" too and I get rather pissed off when media outfits try to use DRM to lock down content that I've paid for, but what exactly is the problem with this?
They are putting the entire archive of a fairly popular TV show online, at no expense. Even if you have to watch commercials with it (do you? You did on their old site, but TFA seems to suggest you won't) how can you complain about that?
I would love to see an online archive of Babylon 5, Star Trek:TNG, Law & Order, 24, or any of the other TV shows that I watch. If I could go back and watch my favorite episode at the click of a button and the only downside was a few ads (that I'd see on TV anyway) how am I losing?
Re:They will never learn! (Score:4, Funny)
when their server becomes a pile of molten slag?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
One would assume that they are using some sort of distributed solution, like Akamai. One would also assume that Viacom has enough resources to pull this off if they decide to do so. I'm not having any problems watching (well, downloading, cuz I'm read
Re:They will never learn! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In 2007, personal consumption has become politicized. We have learned that most corporations, given any oppor
Re:They will never learn! (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop. Stop right there. No "buts." Quit while your ahead.
Lookit, all the non-creators and non-artists of the world said "We want the professional distributors to provide your work online, and on-demand! If you don't give it to us the way we want it, we'll just make copies of it and distribute it ourselves." And along came Napster, and [finally] Youtube.
So now the creators and distributors (Viacom happens to be both) finally begin to steer their gigantic battleship around and begin to offer some shows on the Net. OF COURSE they're going to use their own site to do so (DUH!). Yet you still find a reason to complain because... why? You've already got Youtube bookmarked and it's too much work to mark a new site?
No, the reason (one of them) is that YouTube had a great leveling effect on video. It was the one site where a professionally produced 30-minute sitcom sat on the shelf next to a webcam vid of a coupla 14-year-olds lip-synching to "Barbie Girl." And this was a source of great satisfaction to the lip-synchers. Now, as more and more of the professional content melts away from YouTube and gets archived on the artists' and distributors' own sites, YouTube reverts to the Major Bowes Amateur Hour status from whence it started, like that Flowers from Algernon guy when the drugs wore off. Meanwhile, the semi-pro artists, not quite ready for Viacom, feeling the great sucking cold draft in the room left by the professional content going bye-bye, begin to glance nervously at the barbie-girlers on their left and the exploding Mentos lunatics on their right, and they begin to bail off to online distribution environs that aren't, um, painted in such primary colors. Youtube begins to garner that odiferous MySpace cachet, other distribution sites erupt to fill the want/need, and a new era of entertainment distribution arises, putting content at the fingertips of anyone with a cellphone or PC, and money in the pockets of the content creators.
Youtube is dying. Long live online video distribution!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
And if they can't keep up with the demand then they can always partner with Google/Youtube and have them foot the bandwidth bill. And Viacom would still get get a slice of the revenue because it's their content.
Although something tells me that Viacom
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Nitpick (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nitpick (Score:5, Informative)
So I guess they do considerer "The Daily Show With Craig Kilborn" to be a different show.
Re:Nitpick (Score:4, Interesting)
I know I consider them to be a completely different show.
Not that I have anything against Craig Kilborn or the show while he hosted it, but Jon really did take the show in a significantly different direction. And I think its a significantly better show as a result.
Re:Nitpick (Score:5, Funny)
I'm concerned (Score:4, Funny)
Not the entire run (Score:4, Informative)
Also, full shows are not available, just clips, though supposedly you can piece together most episodes.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071018/wr_nm/dailyshow_dc_2 [yahoo.com]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not the entire run (Score:5, Funny)
Do you also have a meat paste drip in one arm, and a Mountain Dew drip in the other arm? God forbid you actually have to go through that huge motion of 'clicking' something.
Might Cut Down on Copyright Violations (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing this does is solve the problem that people want to share in community something from The Daily Show that they found really funny, but there's no legal way to do it. Now, you can just link to the right clip from your blog, and put your comments, and welcome others.
There may be less need to sue YouTube, because there will be far less reason for anyone to grab a clip and upload it to YouTube in the first place.
It's like the old "common-sense-test" question: if you go into the bathroom and the tub is overflowing, what do you do first? Answer: shut off the water. So they should stop making The Daily Show, and there'd be no problem.
Wait, that wasn't my point at all. This common sense question has nothing to do with the problem. Drat, my analogies never work out!
Not the "Entire" Daily Show archive... (Score:4, Informative)
Only reason they're doing this: (Score:5, Interesting)
I watch on my TV, not my computer (Score:5, Interesting)
At least with YouTube I can access the content directly from my Apple TV (not that YouTube has much to offer in their typical 3-second or whatever clips). I suspect if MySpace gets enough video content Apple will eventually add support for that as well. But companies like Viacom and NBC who decide to offer their own site of Flash video are going to find themselves unnecessarily limiting their potential audience. They'd be much smarter to figure out a way to centralize distribution.
Re:Should have guessed (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda demonstrates the case for p2p file transfers, huh.
Re:Should have guessed (Score:4, Insightful)
This "we must have control at all costs" never makes sense to me, especially when there's a financial reason not too...
Re:Should have guessed (Score:4, Informative)
Many of the companies that threatened to, or did sue youtube, seemed to do so to get more users on their own video-sites. Funny thing is (albeit I might not be what one would describe as an average user) I for one haven't. I like YouTube because it knows what it wants to do, and does it well. It wants to host videos, and it's doing a good job at that. Instead of suing, these companies should've (IMHO, of course) have partnered up with Google & Co. and use the existing fanbase their content had on Youtube, instead of removing the material and hoping people would like to, instead of watching cool videos from one site, wade through half a dozen different sites to do the same..
I'm not too hot on Comedy Centrals own video player, for instance, and as such, have stopped watching clips of Daily Show and the Report, and instead reverted back to my old habit of downloading the whole episodes from tvrss (Only one channel shows either of the two here in Finland: CNBC shows Daily Show Global Edition, which is a shortened version of the original, with a different moment of zen). Was going to post AC, but what the hell..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break! They aren't CHARGING YOU FOR THIS. THEY ARE GIVING IT AWAY. There is no way in hell that you can compare them wanting videos removed from Youtube while GIVING AWAY THE CONTENT FOR FREE to the bullshit that RIAA is trying to p