Viacom Puts the Daily Show Archive Online

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.'"

Should have guessed

[cucumberjones]

It got Slashdotted.

Re:Should have guessed

[wpanderson]

Service unavailable - Fail to connect

Kinda demonstrates the case for p2p file transfers, huh.

Re:

[vishbar]

The whole thing is support by relatively unobtrusive contextual ads.

Kinda demonstrates the case against p2p file transfers...

more like

[themusicgod1]

""The whole thing is support by relatively unobtrusive contextual ads."
Kinda demonstrates the case against p2p file transfers..."
Kinda demonstrates the case against relatively unobtrusive contextual adds.

Re:

[vishbar]

Agreed, they're annoying...but Viacom's gotta make money somehow. Better this than commercials, I'd say.

Re:Should have guessed

[Endymion]

so instead of leaving things be on gootube, and letting google pay for the bandwidth, they decide to setup their own site so they can pay for the bandwidth themselves?

This "we must have control at all costs" never makes sense to me, especially when there's a financial reason not too...

Re:

[Xizer]

Of course they have a financial reason for this. Perhaps you missed the part where they are integrating advertisements?

Re:

[jkabbe]

Viacom not only pays for the bandwidth, but they also earn the ad revenue.

If revenue > bandwidth charges, Viacom gets to go to Step 3.

Re:

[bckrispi]

You mean

3) ???

Re:

[davester666]

This is so close to being something I would like to use. The ads aren't too bad [they have them both before the clip and/or along the bottom], but did they have to chop up each show into so many tiny, unordered pieces? I'd like to see the show for day X, not just the 5 second "moment of zen", then load another page for a 20 second joke about Bush...

Of course, I realize that other people would want to also have access to specific clips like this, to forward to other people...

Re:Should have guessed

[shinmai]

And this is what people kept telling viacom, when they decided to sue youtube, to get more people to use their own video service.

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..

I'd enjoy this but...

[truthsearch]

I don't like it when my TV / VCR gets Slashdotted.

They will never learn!

[garcia]

This is for one reason and one reason only, because GooTube exists. If there was no such thing available to so many people, the media companies wouldn't give a flying rats ass.

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 :(

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:They will never learn!

[compro01]

how can you complain about that?

when their server becomes a pile of molten slag?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:They will never learn!

[ucblockhead]

Don't get your hopes up. They won't put those shows up. They might put up topical shows like "The Daily Show" because they are essentially worthless a week or so after air. You will never see "The Daily Show" DVDs or year old "The Daily Show" reruns on late night TV because no one would buy/watch. Episodic television, on the other hand, are worth money decades after release.

Re:

[Sonivius]

I bought a collection of shrinkwrapped 'Daily Show' DVDs at Best Buy.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[dangitman]

You will never see "The Daily Show" DVDs or year old "The Daily Show" reruns on late night TV because no one would buy/watch.

I would, if they were a reasonable price. I love watching old episodes of The Daily Show. I guess what you are hinting at is one of the biggest problems of modern culture - stuff gets forgotten immediately. How are we supposed to learn from the past if everybody wants to forget it immediately, and move on to the next shiny distraction? No wonder people keep getting screwed over and falling for the same old tricks. No wonder it's so easy for politicians to make people forget what they actually did in the p

Re:

[DragonWriter]

You will never see "The Daily Show" DVDs

On the contrary, the first Daily Show DVD set (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Indecision 2004 was released in 2005.

Re:

[ben there...]

They might put up topical shows like "The Daily Show" because they are essentially worthless a week or so after air. You will never see "The Daily Show" DVDs or year old "The Daily Show" reruns on late night TV because no one would buy/watch.

It's a ridiculous idea to try to regularly catch up with episodes you missed and wanted to see of the Daily Show, too. It's the Daily show, meaning almost 250 episodes a year. One season would fit on ~70 DVDs. At typical per-disc, boxed set rates, it would cost like $350, or some other exorbitant amount of money.

iTunes could work, but they only offer 15 future episodes including the current one for $10, or $2/episode for the past 8. Neither option is very appealing for a regular viewer.

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

Are you suggesting that Ten Steven's series of tubes [thedailyshow.com] isn't going to be mocked for all eternity?

Make sure you watch the next video, too... the Play button at the end of the video plays the next video.

Re:

[ravenspear]

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?

www.tv-links.co.uk [tv-links.co.uk]

redirected? proxy.org to the rescue!

[Scrameustache]

They will never learn :(

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?

Try to access it from Canada, and you'll see what the problem is: As of noon today [10/17/2007], Canadian visitors to Comedy Central's website will now be redirected to thecomedynetwork.ca
Their fucking site needs some obscure bullshit app from Microsoft to work, too. It's bad enough they're trying to keep me away from the sites I want to visit, but they just had to have it use some non-standard crap too, just to add insult to injury.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Scrameustache]

Their fucking site needs some obscure bullshit app from Microsoft to work, too

Uhh, what part of the site is that exactly? I've never had a problem using Firefox to watch TDS vids. Friends of mine watch them on their Macs. I would also assume that the site works just fine under Linux...

The part that makes a link to go download a bit of microsoft .net-integretated plug-in to watch.
You DID notice the part about redirection starting at a given date, right? You,re offering me evidence that since tuesday, noonn, you haven't heard of it?

Re:

[Lumpy]

There is a online archive of those. it's called Netflix.

and I get to watch them in low compression 720X480 resolution instead of 320X240 incredibly high compressed.
Incredibly high bandwidth, very high latency. and no DRM... well no drm that isn't easily circumvented.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

I can now watch Heroes 2 days after it airs on Netflix (with no commercials). That's a pretty good deal to me.

Re:

[Jthon]

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?

I see you haven't heard of AOL's In2TV which just happens to let you watch and stream every episode of Babylon 5, along with some other classic shows (you can even download high quality episodes of some shows). Check it out at http://television.aol.com/in2tv [aol.com]. (This is probably the only good thing I've ever seen come out of AOL.)

wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

When I have control of my content, I have control of the costs and benefits. It appears to me they took their copyrighted videos off youtube in order to start up their own service. They'll control the look, feel and ad revenue. That's the big key here. Comedy Central (et al) will get money in return. Maybe not a profit but Google will see little to no profit.

I think it's a good business decision provided they can keep up with the demand.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[truthsearch]

Didn't Google just start a new revenue-sharing plan on YouTube? Viacom should upload complete episodes as soon as they air so they can beat the other uploaders and still turn a profit.

Re:

[mr_mischief]

Maybe if Google paid them a large percentage of the ad money, they'd consider it. Probably a lot larger percentage than the folks at Google would ever listen to without laughing.

What needs to happen for us to get quality programming online is that people like John Kricfalusi who hate how TV networks are run need to do exactly what he did with The Goddamn George Liquor Program and some of his other work. They need to self-distribute online or direct to DVD. If Google let people with professionally produced,

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

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?

Cheaper? Yes. More profitable? Uncertain. A company tries to make a profit by hosting their content online and people at slashdot are still unhappy? Some of you people truly are just pirates at heart aren't you?

Re:

[PopeRatzo]

I don't do business with Viacom, so as long as I can find episodes ripped to avi or mpeg, "elsewhere" on the Internet, I will watch them that way.

In 2007, personal consumption has become politicized. We have learned that most corporations, given any opportunity to screw their customers, will enthusiastically do so.

So, when I can identify a corporation that is engaged in practices that I find offensive, and I have any small opening to thwart them (even though any effect of my personal actions will be very t

Re:They will never learn!

[RobotRunAmok]

I realize they want to control the content they own and all, but

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!!

Nitpick

[dorsey]

Hasn't the Daily Show been on tv for more than eight years? Or do they just consider the Craig Kilborn years to be a completely different show?

Re:Nitpick

[The Cheez-Czar]

Both this article and the original LA Times says its an archive of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart", Which started in 1999.
So I guess they do considerer "The Daily Show With Craig Kilborn" to be a different show.

Re:

[devangm]

The "10 f&*king years" segment didn't get that memo.

Re:Nitpick

[vux984]

Or do they just consider the Craig Kilborn years to be a completely different show?

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:

[hansamurai]

Maybe the correct title would be "Viacom Puts the Entire Daily Show with Jon Stewart Archive Online as I think the show is technically called that now? But you're right, the show began in 1996 and Craig Kilborn was the host until 1999.

Re:Nitpick

[halcyon1234]

I think that "Viacom Puts the Entire Daily Show with Jon Stewart Archive Online as I think the show is technically called that now? But you're right, the show began in 1996 and Craig Kilborn was the host until 1999" is too long of a title for a Slashdot article.

In a word...

[thatskinnyguy]

Yes.

Re:

[Jason Levine]

I believe they have all of the John Stewart shows online now and plan on getting the Kilborn ones up by early 2008. Plus, The Colbert Report will get a similar treatment in 2008.

I'm concerned

[jollyreaper]

That sounds cool and all but something inside of me is screaming "It's a tarp! [velvetcache.org]" But seriously, whenever a gigacorp does something that seems like a good thing, it just means they're distracting you from the lawyer sneaking up behind with the Urotsukidji razor dildo assault cock. "Oh, wow, this looks interest---YEEEIEEEEEOOWW!!!"

Re:

[Kingrames]

It was a "Nazi Death Rape Machine." Get it right.

ABC

[Huitzlopochtli]

ABC.com also offers streaming, 1280X1024 HD full episodes on their website. It's still in beta, but works fine.

Re:

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Sadly, they don't seem to have any programming that doesn't completely suck.

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

That's OK... the last time I tried using their site with Firefox on Windows, it didn't work with that either despite claiming to.

Not the entire run

[skintigh2]

The Daily Show has been around since 1996, but 8 years does cover all the Jon Stewart years.

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:

[Hatta]

Yeah it's a pretty weak gesture. I've got an RSS feed dumping torrents in a watch directory shared on my lan. All I have to do is turn on my xbox and watch. If I have to sit in my computer chair and click a bunch of shit I'm not even going to bother.

Re:Not the entire run

[YrWrstNtmr]

If I have to sit in my computer chair and click a bunch of shit I'm not even going to bother.

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.

Re:

[jZnat]

Computers are supposed to automate things for us, not make us work for the computer. Having to jump through a bunch of hoops just to do something is completely unacceptable when there are far easier and more efficient ways of doing things.

Re:

[YrWrstNtmr]

I just went and watched a segment. Doesn't look like a bunch of hoops to me. Find which one you want (oh look...you can search the metadata tags), and click play. Poof...it plays.
Now...you could make the valid argument about watching on the PC vs the TV, but many people output to the TV direct from the PC anyway. I often do. Yes, it is rather annoying that they've broken it up into small segments, but the search feature outweighs this, IMHO, anyway. What did Jon say about China, or the Air Force. All neatl

Re:

[Prien715]

Sleep is for the week

Is the spelling of "week" in your sig intentional? If so it's hilarious;)

Re:

[skintigh2]

The first time I wrote that (at the end of a rambling 5AM email about yet another all-nighter in college) it was not.

Then it became a way of life.

Then I got a job.

Nice start...

[Penguinisto]

Not a real fan of the Daily Show (what? I rarely watch the damned TV as it is), but I like that larger companies are at least beginning to make a serious effort (and not just post 380-by-tiny-as-hell resolution clips, then call 'em episodes).

I just wonder what, say, DirecTV and (to a lesser extent due to bundled broadband) Cable TV operators will do once enough people start ditching their video TV subscriptions, or at least curtailing them to a sizeable extent (I realize this is quite a long ways off, but

Re:

[szyzyg]

You know youtube posts all its; stuff in even tinier than hell 320x240 resolution at a partly 300kbit encoding bandwidth.

Even though almost [vimeo.com] every [imeem.com] other [guba.com] site [veoh.com] uses better video quality people are still stuck on youtube. Hell I see people attaching music to a single image so they can upload it to youtube and share their favourite tracks - all that effort when there's sites like imeem.com that let you post and share the mp3's, and do it legally.

So, viacom has added one more media site to the mix.

Might Cut Down on Copyright Violations

[dprovine]

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!

Re:

[AeroIllini]

That's because your analogy didn't include a car.

Not the "Entire" Daily Show archive...

[Tetsujin]

Where are the Craig Kilborn eps?

Re:

[IPFreely]

Where are the Craig Kilborn eps?

I guess the news broke...

and he didn't fix it.

Re:

[ultramk]

In Hell. That's what the devil makes c-list celebrities watch for the rest of eternity.

Re:

[Tetsujin]

In Hell. That's what the devil makes c-list celebrities watch for the rest of eternity.

It's doubly effective for the c-list celebrities who were actually on the show... As they are forced to re-live the humiliation of having "ten questions" injected into their interview again, and again...

Still, there was some funny shit on the Daily Show even in the old days. That, rather than a love of Craig Kilborn's work, is why I take exception to this being proclaimed the "entire" archive...

Re:

[Tetsujin]

The summary is wrong. They aren't putting up 'The Daily Show', they're putting up 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'. I don't believe Craig Kilborn was in 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'.

Wow. You sure burned me on that one.

Now that's news!

[jessiej]

But for this to really have an effect, Viacom is going to have to tackle some bandwidth issues.

I Also Hope

[eldavojohn]

I also hope that someone puts the entire testimony of Stephen Colbert & John Stewart [reuters.com] online from the youtube/viacom trial. I believe they are just as sarcastic and realistic in real life as they are in their shows.

It would be nice to watch the exxpression on the judge and juror's faces as they hear what John & Steve have to say.

Re:

[Lynxara]

I would hope most things in real life are realistic...

that's nice

[gEvil (beta)]

That's nice, but the Daily Show has been on for 11 years now.

Only reason they're doing this:

[SpectreBlofeld]

Because nobody will buy DVDs of old news programs and they know it.

Why is it cut up into 3 minute clips then?

[MikeUW]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really like watching a show that's been sliced and diced into little pieces...I generally prefer the whole thing. I'm sure that having individual parts reduces overall bandwidth for their servers, but could there at least be an option for the whole show? Otherwise, I don't see how this is any better than if someone were to download it at a higher resolution/bitrate from a torrent site.

Re:

[Sarcasmooo!]

Are they at least back to back clips? I can't load it obviously, but if they're cutting anything at all, I'll just go to a torrent site. I'm not interested in a highlights reel.

I watch on my TV, not my computer

[kherr]

This is nice and all, but this Flash video crap is stupid. Not only is it not cached properly by web browsers, but people don't watch TV on their tiny computer screens. I watch content via my Apple TV on my gigantic HDTV home theater, I have no interest in sitting at a keyboard waiting for video snippets to load in some Flash video player with a poor user interface.

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:

[Babbster]

I won't argue with you about Flash video, which varies wildly from unwatchable to acceptable, but is it Viacom's fault that your AppleTV doesn't support their site (or, apparently, MySpace), or is it Apple's?

It's Apple's "fault" but bad for business

[kherr]

It's technically Apple's fault, and as I said in my original comment Apple can add support for more sites when they feel the need. My point was that, by balkanizing video distribution, companies such as Viacom and NBC run the risk of creating a fractured consumer market. Sure they get some benefits from distributing their own content, but is it enough to offset the loss of viewers? It may be for now, but how about three years from now, or five? How many people won't have integrated internet viewing with the

Re:

[Babbster]

Couldn't the same be said of any content distribution, though? Why would we want all of our video coming from one source? As long as the providers support standards (and, love it or hate it, Flash is very much a standard), consumers shouldn't want all their content coming from the same place. That's the definition of a monopoly and it's counterproductive in an environment with so much room for competition. All Apple would have to do is support a variety of standards in the AppleTV and you too wouldn't c

Re:

[TheRaven64]

It might be a CPU speed issue. I don't really care much about the picture; most of the humour is audio, and so I played them on the machine I had connected to my HiFi. This is a 1.5GHz PowerPC G4. With no other programs running, the CPU usage was 100% and the player was showing about 5 frames per second. Note that this same machine only drops the occasional frame when showing 1280p H.264 movie trailers from the Apple site.

Re:

[MWoody]

You're totally right, this youtube thing will never catch on.

Re:

[shish]

Which isn't available for my Opera browser

Are you sure it's not available? I seem to have it not only existing, but working just fine under both linux and windows...

Who's the idiot that told slashdot?

[spikexyz]

I was happily watching eposides till some goof submitted it to slashdot. Daft fool!

Why bother with old shows?

[mmcuh]

The Daily Show is news satire. It's relevant for about one or two weeks. Why would anyone want to watch 8 year old episodes?

Win Arguments on the Internet

[hardburn]

This is great. Now when conservatives say that the Daily Show will fail if Hillary gets elected, we can point directly to how badly they ripped into the first Clinton administration.

So...

[trrwilson]

How long do you think it will be before someone comes up with a way to automatically view, save, and organize/categorize all these clips? Open DShowDL Wait X hours Ding! Everything!

OMFGSEX

[Sarcasmooo!]

My math is terrible and my method was roughly estimated, but not counting commercial time or the last 2 years (which I remember well enough) I'd say I still have about 400 hours of daily show to watch. Maybe someone not as lazy as me can give a better number.

Big Browser Window

[dangitman]

Vimeo, already offering 1280X720 HD quality direct from the browser.

Why would I want to watch HD video in my browser? I'd rather watch it full-screen with software designed for playing back video.

Motherload?

[Rhesusmonkey]

You guys are all wrapped up in the legality and whatnot when the greater issue is right in front of you: Motherload, the comedy central content delivery system is abysmal. It forgets what it's doing, fails to load reliably, spams the same video ads over and over while simultaneously showing you photo and text ads for the exact same product (seeing the Starbucks logo in 3 places at once does nothing to affect my buying habits, sorry) It's just a pain in the hinder. I'll go anywhere, youtube, gootube, even

7,134?

[mqduck]

Uh... it claims to have 7,134 videos, but it only shows 55. Where are the rest?

Re:

[VGPowerlord]

The main page has both a search box and Flash navigation for selecting a year, month, and day. Keep in mind that the Daily Show only has new episodes 4 days a week.

Re:

[mqduck]

I see the search bar, but the closest thing I can find to any sort of "navigation" is the Most Popular Videos box...

The only link *I* wanted

[charleste]

...to the explanation [thedailyshow.com] (with graphics) of internet tubes.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Stray7Xi]

As long as the content is available for direct linking there's no reason to complain about this. When the market has enough entrants then you'll see google video turn into something that directly searches a bunch of video sites and links you directly to the video you want.

That said is there already some kind of aggregrator site that links directly to videos. The rate that these new video sites open up make it hard to keep track of.

Re:

[geekoid]

Why not get payed from youtube to post the show in it's entirety?

Drop the video hosting part of the business all together.

Embed advertising intelligently

Re:

[Hairy1]

The thing is that you could enter a deal with YouTube in which ad dollars are given to you. However, unlike rolling your own site you don't have to buy thousands of servers, you don't have to manage the infrastructure, and you get to be in the place where a whole heap of people are already viewing video online. Your viewers get a better experience and feel free, while you profit. The key to the online world is community. If we don't feel that there is community around a site we won't be interested.

That said

Re:

[ZachPruckowski]

Again, grow the hell up. It's really that much harder to do a Google search for 'The Daily Show' and following the first link as opposed to doing a search on YouTube for 'The Daily Show'? If you owned the content would you want YouTube raking in the ad dollars for something THAT YOU CREATED?

Actually, it's better than YouTube. It's got all the episodes, and I assume that they'll have some sort of method of ordering them or some kind of consistent naming. Especially with clip ratings and quality tagging, it'll be a lot easier to find the right episode on the official site than on YouTube, even assuming there's no take-down issues.

Re:

[speaker of the truth]

I'm not bookmarking 5,000,000 video sites to do casual browsing. That's stupid.

If you watch 5,000,0000 different shows/clips in a month then I'd say that's not the only thing stupid.

5,000,000 video sites

[iminplaya]

And STILL nothing on!

Re:

[thatskinnyguy]

Viacom isn't that far off from vacuum. The daily Bush rants are all part of the suck.

Re:

[Catbeller]

Limbaugh is an ignorant liar, and Stewart is anything but. They are not equivalent. The truth isn't in between the "extremes" of two maniac political groups. A fact is true, or it is not. It doesn't care about your opinion, or some arbitrary spectrum erected by public figures, mostly "news"people, to shield their asses from having to form an intelligent judgement about the news they present.

Bush lied, we are in a stupid war of aggression against an innocent nation for its oil; Bush fucked up and we were att