Not funny

October 28, 2006 by Jeff Jarvis

Comedy Central is reported to be pulling clips off YouTube. Fools. They should be putting ads up on those clips instead. We are the new network, fools. Your old networks are not as powerful as you think.

  • Ben Sparks

    How can Comedy Central put ads on clips uploaded by users? YouTube certainly doesn’t offer a solution for this.

  • http://www.buzzmachine.com Jeff Jarvis

    Ben,
    Comedy Central can upload its own bits and include ads. That’d be the smart thing to do: recognize that we can watch on our own networks, too, and grow beyond the limits of the old networks.

  • http://www.howardowens.com/ Howard Owens

    I posted on this last night … something doesn’t add up. Not only has CC been a friend of YouTube (lots of references on Colbert Report and some of the Daily Show), you can still find plenty of material from these shows on YT. Lots of South Park, too.

    I can see some idiot attorney at Viacom sending a letter YT, but so far there is only scant evidence that it’s being acted on.

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  • Angelos

    They want you to be a Comedy Central Insider, whatever that is.

    All I know is, their media player doesn’t work in Mac/Firefox, so they’re useless to me anyway.

  • Wagner James Au

    The money move would be for Comedy Central to slighly letterbox the Daily Show/South Park/etc. clips they upload, and put ads on the top and bottom strips. So no commercial interruption, just display the ads unobtrusively but visible on the sides. Charge 10$ CPM, one million views gets them $10,000, and that’s almost total gravy. Is Comedy Central fucking stupid?

  • Phil

    Fools huh? We are the new network? This is ridiculous, without Comedy Central creating the clips that people are posting their would be nothing to post! What is stronger than being the creator and original source? Nothing. People are going to watch South Park, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report with or without WorthlessTube.

  • http://www.ericthansen.com Eric Hansen

    Preach, Jarvis! As a perpetually broke college student, I have two primary options for enjoying network television entertainment. Being a slave to their program schedule or YouTube/BitTorrent et al. Ah, but ever since NBC Rewind was launched (door number 3 in this example), I have been faithfully watching every episode of Studio 60. I welcome the ads because I get to watch the programming on my own schedule and 5 preroll ads is better than 18 minutes worth of ‘em—especially after conforming my schedule to their schedule. Would I do the same to watch The Daily Show, Colbert Report, The Office, and others? You bet! I’ll even tell ‘them’ my gender and interests so I’m not stuck watching 5 identical Tampax commercials. The downside will be I flunk college because I’m glued to my computer for hours on end watching “TV.”

    Until the networks go “all in,” I will continue my cumbersome entertainment aggregation through live viewing, YouTube-ing, Torrent-ing, NBC Rewind-ing and TV-on-DVD-ing.

    And Phil, nobody is denying the importance of the artists and original source. Don’t be prey to the symmantic greyness of the word “network.” Average people now have their own netowrk for telling stories with video, and the broadcast/cable network content providers are still relevent, but their model of delivery through “networks” of affiliates is older than the “new” model embodied by YouTube. Right now, the Internet is a place for content from each network to integrate or find their own niche—history is still being written. I refer you to the stories of new “old network” stars being discovered on the “new netowork” that belongs to the people who populate it with content.

  • http://www.trevorcarpenter.com Trevor Carpenter

    Phil doesn’t get it.

    The “network” and the “content creator” are not necessarily the same thing. The “network” is how we get the content. The coming revolution in media is about both entities. The networks are becoming diverse and small. The content creators must do this too.

    Way to go Jarvis.

  • http://www.howardowens.com/ Howard Owens

    I remain skeptical. This entire story is based on one e-mail to one blogger saying that one video has been removed, with no apparent attempt by any news organization to confirm the the accuracy of the original report.

    I have more here.