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Jon Stewart, Lorne Michaels Come Out In Favour of YouTube
techdirt writes "Viacom employee Jon Stewart recently announced that he believes his bosses are making a mistake in taking Viacom content off of YouTube. Today, NBC employee and Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels has stated he can't understand NBC's position on YouTube. The interview with Michaels is especially interesting, because it was a Saturday Night Live clip of the infamous 'Lazy Sunday' music video that is often credited with putting YouTube on the map. At the same time, however, almost everyone admitted that it did wonders in revitalizing SNL's reputation (as well as boosting Andy Samberg's reputation to new heights). Yet, NBC's lawyers shot it down, limiting the benefit to SNL. It appears that Michaels understands that, and says he wishes they could put more of the show on YouTube."
Ben Cartwright died a long time ago.
What?
Lorne Michaels + Out of the loop = me crazy suspicious
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
The reference YouTube clip has already been removed, and I'm among the first 10 posts here.
Feh.
People always accuse big corporations of not caring about the customer. Now it seems like they don't even care about the success of their own products. The posting of the SNL material clearly helped NBC. It sounds like the corporation is in denial over that.
You see something that you don't perceive as an advertisement, and because of that it has a better effect than had it been an advertisement. If you enjoy a grainy 5 minute clip from a show on YouTube, it might entice you to check it out on your television. Especially if it's referred to you by a friend, then its a whole social dynamic that advertising begs to capture. Word of mouth is powerful, because people generally respect a personal opinion more so than a fake corporate one.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
I was interested to read today that the ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has a policy that allows for it's content to be used on other platforms by operators.
I found this out after content was taken down when a teenager pretended to be their representative and sent YouTube an infringement notice (complete with awful spelling, "Australian Broddcasting Corperation")! The kid has since apologised.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
All of the artists and the people who are actual involved with creating all of the content for the music labels, television stations, and other big media companies realize that at least to a certain extent allowing people to freely access and spread their content is good for them. Maybe some bored person who just happens to be browsing around the internet will happen to stumble on this content and for that reason might end up buying a CD, DVD, or something else to support the creaters of that content. I know that I've personally discovered several different things that have interested me and lead to me purchasing a product because I've found free clips or samples on the internet.
The corporate dinosaurs who are in charge don't seem to realize this and almost flat out refuse to change. EMI offering to sell music without DRM on several online music stores is a good start, but it seems like almost everyone else is trying to despirately cling to a business model that the consumers are rejecting in favor or something better. In a truly free market, I'd like to think that these people would have been put out of business already, but with the fortunes they've accumulated to court government and write their own policy, they keep trying to dictate how we will consume the content that's produced.
Why not give us what we want. Put free clips of The Daily Show on Youtube, but ask the Google display advertisements to buy official merchandise from their store in exchange for the rights to display it. I get to consume some content on demand for the reasonable price of free, and if I'm really interested in it, I've got a nice link to where I can get more or buy something else to support the creators. I think there are a lot of people out there, who like me, don't mind paying a little bit to support the people who make the music, television, or other content that we enjoy.
While you can certainly find whole seasons of shows on youtube, the more usual thing is to just make a short clip of the relevant part. Then, the youtube superstars post their replies, followed by their hanger-ons, all the way down to the fat, ugly dregs of the internet. As with slashdot, the original article doesn't really matter. The news is more of a starting point than an end in itself.
It seems to me that "old media" is really being rather obsessive about infringement. So what if a couple thousand people watched your small, grainy, old clip. So what if a crazy, half-naked scot provides more interesting political commentary than your own guys. OK, that one must hurt a lot. But still. You've got loads of money. You've got publishing expertise; you know what the public wants. Probably. Most likely, net neutrality won't go through, so you might be able to clamp down on digital distribution. It'll be just like cable TV, distributed through the same cable providers, but routed over the internet instead. Unlike, say, book publishers, your business model isn't totally shot, not if you adapt.
Hang in there, Viacom. We're rooting for you.
Anyone should watch something free on the Internet that they could've already watched for free over the airwaves or on the basic cable they are almost assuredly already paying for. Oh wait, but then they don't get to see the ads that they'd skip over anyway by changing channels or fast forwarding past on their DVRs.
Although the faint hope of commercial value in many television properties does give some television shows some guarantee it will be around for future folks to look at (including historians), I think it is also important that the banal and the "so-common-as-to-be-worthless" content get it's shot at archival also. I think Youtube is somewhat important - it looks to be strong enough to survive until digital storage is cheap enough that our current processes of digital archival are made irrelevant. It's important, because although there are groups like the Digital Archive Project, Archive.org, and the various file trading groups which keep a lot of content alive long term, none of these have as strong a hope of legally keeping their information freely available, or have the same mass of content that Youtube/Google can provide.
It may seem rather silly to keep ahold of some of this stuff - but even if you'd never even dream of spending the time to watch any of it, I believe that our increasing ability to find new ways of consuming content and searching through it will bring surprising value, even as the value of content itself continues to fall. Youtube increases this aggregate historical value still further by also having a (youth and nerd-oriented) snapshot of a wide variety of daily lives around the world.
Ryan Fenton
Sometimes you'd have to step back and wonder, "Are these corporations run by idiots?" The answer is an emphatic "Yes"
I believe the old-media bosses at RIAA, MPAA, Viacom, NBCUNIVERSAL, et. al. are doing the world a favor by being so foolishly stubborn.
This whole situation reminds me of a PBF comic
Whether or not it is in Viacom's best interest to allow Google to do whatever they want with their intellectual property is beside the point. The question is whether or not Google is profiting off of Viacom's content without an agreement in place to allow them to do so. You can argue until you are blue in the face about how Viacom ought to run their business, it has no bearing on whether or not Google has the right to make money off of Viacom's content without their permission.
I'm not saying that Viacom is right or that Google is right, just that there are a lot of articles on Slashdot trying to find excuses for Google that miss point entirely.
He cares because exposure on youtube gives him popularity, wich increases HIS earning potential. Very sensible off course BUT why should the actuall owner of the show care?
Imagine if you like a supermarket, say the meat department feels SURE that they can have more success if they were allowed to re-arrange the isles, the placement of the registers, in fact overhaul the entire way the shop is being run. Yippie? OR would the actuall owner of the store perhaps wonder if what is good for the meat department is good for the entire store?
NBC has a business model. It don't really matter wether you agree with it or not, or even if it is the right one, or wether new tech is making it obsolete. It is THEIR business model and theirs to follow or change by their choice.
It to a degree depends on giving people restricted access to their content so they can in turn expose those people to ads for wich they are paid.
NBC's primary income comes from selling ads, NOT from tv shows. They are just the way to get people to watch the ads.
The popularity of a tv-show therefore only matters if you get people to watch ads. Youtube does NOT run NBC ads, therefore it don't help NBC.
Their MIGHT be a side-effect, that because people saw a NBC show on youtube they will watch the regular version with ads included BUT there is a huge risk. What if people just expect ALL the NBC's shows to be on youtube instead and stop watching the ad-laden tv-shows all together. Those people that claim that exposure to shows on youtube leads to increased television watching are ignoring that it could just as easily just lead to more youtube watching.
Imagine if you like of a thirdparty pulled all the content of slashdot and re-published it without slashdot ads leading to massive exposure. Sure individual story submitters might be pleased BUT would CowboyNeal welcome this? Would he be told that people reading slashdot stories somewhere else is going to lead to increased traffic to his own site? Slashdot stories are NOT there because CowboyNeal wants you to know about thing, but because they are the way to get you to see ads.
NBC and the likes are fighting for their business model, selling ads by offering free content. If someone else redisplays that content they can't sell ads. It is perfectly simple. Perhaps their business model is bound to die off (unlikely, youtube == google and google gives free content in exchange for watching paid ads as its core business model) but they are under no obligation to hurry it along.
I wonder what Jon Stewart and Lorne Micheals would say if their tv stations came to them and said, "hi, we are going to stop broadcasting your shows on tv with ads and just post them directly to youtube instead, your salery? Well, negotiate that with google, they are the ones displaying the ads."
IF youtube display's NBC programs then NBC becomes NOT a television studio but "merely" a producer. This is not unusual, there are plently of tv-producers who do NOT own the means of actually broadcasting what they create, (at least they do in europe) and they sell it to companies/organistions that can. If youtube wants to show NBC programs, with their own ads inserted, they need to pay NBC for the production.
Anything less just doesn't make sense from NBC's point of view.
Unless offcourse Jon Stewarts and the likes are going to do their work for free. Not bloody likely is it?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Putting the daily show on YouTube won't be good for it's DVD sales. I for one are interested in a +-25 DVD collection of a single season of the Daily Show.
I believe most people would willingly support their favorite bands, or the creators of TV shows they often watch, but not when the organizations managing those groups continue to bite the hand that feeds them. The reality of the situation is simple; broadcasters and distributors are being trumped by a much more efficient distribution medium. Instead of adapting their business models they're flailing about in some futile attempt to stop the inevitable and alienating their consumers in the process.
The Puppeteer in Ghost in the Shell summed it up quite nicely, "All things change in a dynamic environment, your effort to remain what you are is what limits you." (I bought several GITS DVD's after I'd downloaded the first movie, I'd never have bothered to look into it otherwise)
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
to make the corporate lawyers feel comfortable. And shameful as it may be, there is no small amount of greed involved; the big corps want to maximize the earning potential of their products and the established way to do that is to clamp down on who gets access to what. NBC/CBS/FOX/CommedyCentral/etc want you to go it THEIR websites to see their content so they can generate discreet viewership tallies to entice more advertisers to give them more money.
The flaw (as I think the common view is) in espousing the "virtues" of spreading content around for free is that the people who produce the content do not benefit from it directly and that's all the traditional been counters care about. "We lost X amount of potential viewers to our site (which is oriented to get them to see what we want them to see) and that equates to Y amount of lost revenue. Clamp all our content down so that we can maximize our profit." Think of the NFL's end-of-broadcast disclaimer for a perfect example.
Put simply, the crux is this: juxtaposing the need for people to see your product with the need to make real, quantifiable dollars from it. It used to be that we lived in a 3-channel-plus-PBS TV world, where the best way to spread interest about your shows was found in the TV guide, seconded by word-of-mouth. These companies need to embrace our digital world rather than try to fight it like the RIAA and MPAA have done (with questionable success). Offering their content on DVD's and Itunes is a great start but what better way to get people to want to purchase this stuff than by releasing low quality 320x240 vids on Youtube? I'll even go so far as to posit that the spreading and sharing and bookmarking of popular "viral" videos is the new "word-of-mouth"...
So it's all well and good that some celebrities are promoting the easy spreading of digital media such as the TV shows they produce and star in; let's just try to understand it in a way that satisfies the demands of the bottom line and also the public's need for more content. It's going to have to be a compromise...
There is simply too much glass..
Water is wet.
More earth-shattering revelations tonight at eleven.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
What is happening is that the networks are wanting to prevent GOOGLE from owning them. Google is not a search. Google is an ad engine. They were iindirect competition against the networks, but with youtube, are now direct competition. The real problem here is that these companies are thinking like typical American companies. They do not want to be a big fish in an ocean. They wish to be what they consider a whale in a lake. Viacom and others are now working with several youtube wanna-bes because THEY are part owners of these companies. The media companies are hoping to own not just the content but the deliver system.
Imagine what would have happened had RIAA simply created a new company against napster back when napster first started AND then shut down napster? Today, it would be a mosnter. As it is, RIAA is probably in danger of having the musicians do their own thing, rather than go with a label. MPAA is part of that, and are now taking a different approach. BTW, they are also concerned that the young talent is slowly drifting away from them. If they are stuck making Barbi as Cinderella, or Escape from LA, while the indies run off elsewhere, then the studies will be in serious trouble.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
1. Jon Stewart is an entertainer whose personal fortune, success, and prestigate is much more closely tied to personal recognition and likeability rather than the long-term profitability of his network. Hence, he has every reason in the world to want to be associated with the 'free beer' aspects of let's put stuff on youtube.
2. lazy sunday's youtube success doubtlessly brought some fame back to SNL. however, to start as that as a premise and then argue that ergo snl/viacom should not care if the funniest bits of their shows are put onto the internet en masse by anonymous users is completely disingenious. more realistically, it makes sense from SNL's / the network's standpoint to be against random copyright infringing posts of clips from their show but to put carfully selected teaser bits up that may encourage viewers to their television show, where they actually make money through advertising. and this is exactly what they do.
Personally, my position is that media should be allowed to be copied and shared freely, so long as it is done noncommercially. Share music with your friends? Fine. Put an MP3 on your blog? Also fine by me. But create a site like YouTube that intends to make big money off of ads - I think that money should go to the media creator, not to YouTube. In other words - if anyone can make money from a piece of media, it should be the creator, but if no one can (and with P2P indeed no one does, as things currently stand), no one should. So I support P2P (and am using BitTorrent right now at 25K download rate), but not necessarily YouTube.
Note that the big media companies have ironically screwed themselves with the DMCA in the US, because it actually gives YouTube a fairly airtight defense against the Viacom allegations (all they need to do is respond to takedown notices, and they do). So, even though personally I think only Viacom should be making money off of Comedy Central clips, it looks like YouTube may do so as well.
For whatever reason, and I am not trying to appear difficult, I have an extremely strong aversion to ads, especially at the obnoxious frequency they
...Interesting. Let's hope that neither the coporate hive mind, nor content itself acquire too much sentience! LOL.
are displayed in American TV programming.
What appears significant to me here is not so much who owns, business models going the way of the dodo, and so on... but the fact that such things might
actually empower some people to think for themselves and start to shun this system of ad-supported content, somehow and over time. I'd much prefer
watching a show a few days late, but ad-free, even if it was for a small fee. (I'd get my time back)
Even though Google has ads, they are so unobtrusive that one hardly notices them, and certainly a giant step away from 'coitus interruptus' every 11 minutes.
Ultimately, there is already so much content out there that those who protect its re-runs too fiercely may just suffer slow death by being ignored and
gradually made less relevant, as their own interest is not that of sharing, but profit at the expense of everything else.
Undeniably, information now more and more wants to be free. It seems to have a mind of its own, and just as corporations sometimes display a 'gestalt survival instinct'
of sorts, it would now appear that content itself also wants to insure its survival as a meme in the unconscious mind of humanity, regardless of corporate control.
Z.
If ya give a little, you get a lot in return. Marketing weenies know this as "Building the Brand". By giving your current users a way to introduce a product to a friend, via a quick clip that catches essence of your brand, you gain much more exposure.
If a friend tells me such-and-such a show is good, but my time is valuable. I don't want to wait through all the slogging bits (commericals, etc.) just to get to the meat of what it is about. However, after viewing a few entertaining short clips, I am more apt schedule time to watch the show because my interest is perked.
Afterall, its our sweet sweet dollars they are all grubbing for and treating us all like theives isn't the best way to get it IMHO.
--tmk
Colbert actually had a person from the EFF on the show, which filed a lawsuit against Viacom on behalf of Moveon.org for a "baseless copyright complaint from media giant Viacom." If one watches Colbert and Stewart, they've clearly taken a liking to youtube, enough to mention it in other guest interviews and the casual banter that starts and ends each show.
Television producers would make more money on bittorrent.
then it's time to fire the "traditional bean counters". Even the founding fathers could not predict how powerful corporations would become, and it's time to amend our constitution to apply to any entity with a net worth exceeding a specific percent of our GDP. This would counter certain laws which "protect" our economy by more or less compelling behavior contrary to individual and consumer rights.
once a corporate entity reaches a certain magnitude (either in general or in its respective market), it gains power comparable to regulatory and legislative bodies. it's time to impose the same responsibility upon them as government.
also, "potential" anything (viewers, revenue, etc) are only that.. potential.
maybe HBO should be allowed to shut down showtime for stealing "potential viewers".
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As you mention, google has ads. Quick question, is google a search company (developing and selling seach related technology) OR is it an ad seller (selling ad space to people and getting people to view those ads)
The answer is offcourse simple, google is an ad seller, in similar ways as tv-stations (those paid for by ads anyway are).
In a way its business model is almost like that of CNN. CNN doesn't create the news (well, it ain't been proven at least :p ), like google they have a "system" in place that allows them to gather the news, display it, attract eyeballs and then show ads to those eyeballs. So google gathers websites rather then news, still all about getting eyeballs to view ads.
Your comment about tv ads is inaccurate. You forgot to mention radio. I don't know how the US runs its radio stations but in holland it seems like every hour ends with 5 minutes of obnoxious ads, then 1 minute news, and another 5 minutes of obnoxious ads. Some stations even got ads at other times. ENOUGH, MP3player time!
BUT the only alternative is to pay for your content in another way, the BBC method (license fees), the dutch method (payed through regular taxes), the cable subscription way. Don't matter, somehow the content has to be payed for because the people involved in producing it expect to be paid.
Youtube ain't changing that. In fact youtube being now owned by google is probably someday soon going to displays ads as well. Offcourse they can display fewer ads, since they do not actually have to pay for any production.
That is roughly similar to how I can sell stolen goods for less as well.
The problem with the ad-supported services model is that it only works if there isn't an alternative way of getting the service. Before "the net" you had two choices. Watch content via the ad method OR buy it directly.
Filesharing has changed that.
Youtube has NOT. Youtube is just an other ad-supported service. Fewer ads, but ads nonetheless (well at least that is what everyone presumes).
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
no, viacom has a copyright on it, and is priviledged with a limited set of exclusive trade rights, trade rights which the people should (and according to the US constitution DO) have every right to take away should they find them onerous or unreasonable.
congress may be a reeking cesspool of corruption and graft, but the internet allows us to do with overreachig copyright laws what we did before with the volstead act, nullify them through civil disobedience.
copyright does not equal property, and any society which posits the idea that information can be "owned" is already too far down the road to tyrrany.
in fact, tyrrany was what originated the concept of copyright in the first place. copyright started out as permission from the crown to print, period. if printed without copyrights from the crown, those involved in said work would be imprisoned or worse, and if anything printed with copyrights crossed the line into "dissidence" they'd revoke the rights and kill the printing company.
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both the Daily Show and SNL consists of small blocks of "skits" and that's usually what's copied to youtube. so for their shows it's perfect. however, for other shows who are actual series and make lots of money from DVD sales they'd be hurt (financially) if their entire episodes were on youtube.
both of these guys are stepping up to appear "champions for free content on the web", but i'd bet huge bucks that they'd be perfectly fine with viacom/nbc stepping up and saying, "ok - we'll just allow certain shows (Daily Show/SNL) to be a part of youtube".
1. Post clip on youtube
2. Millions watch it
3. Viewing figures go up
4. Advertisers, uh, advertise on your program.
5. Profit
Once lawyers start running the company, kiss goodbye to profits and future.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
2. lazy sunday's youtube success doubtlessly brought some fame back to SNL. however, to start as that as a premise and then argue that ergo snl/viacom should not care if the funniest bits of their shows are put onto the internet en masse by anonymous users is completely disingenious. more realistically, it makes sense from SNL's / the network's standpoint to be against random copyright infringing posts of clips from their show but to put carfully selected teaser bits up that may encourage viewers to their television show, where they actually make money through advertising. and this is exactly what they do.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
If you see a "teaser bit" from a great sketch that aired last week, what are you supposed to do: watch next week's episode, which you know won't have that sketch because it's a different episode? Buy the DVD when it comes out a year later, if ever (SNL doesn't seem to do DVDs of each season)? Neither seems like an acceptable alternative.
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Every now and then I watch SNL, and it still mostly sucks. Like your typical album put out by major record companies, there are one or two good skits buried in a bunch of mediocre garbage. So I just switch back to MadTV and watch a bunch of good skits with only a little mediocre garbage. I normally only stick with SNL when I want to watch it for the guest host (such as Rainn Wilson, etc.)
What YT exposure does is show off the good stuff that you don't see because you got tired of waiting for it and simply assumed that it was 100% suck. And, uh, makes you want to watch it more?
I thought I had a point here, and I guess it's that "YT exposure keeps you from thinking that SNL is 100% suck". Oh well, back to MadTV.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You see, I don't know about Lorne Micheals, but Jon Stewart is sane. That means he's not equipped to understand the subtleties of company policy.
It's been a long time.
John Stewart is a very smart man and he knows free publicity when he sees it. When a particularly funny bit comes along why not post it? Really, what are they protecting? Who is going to pay for episode of TDS from a week ago or even last year? It's comedy that's very time sensitive, making past episodes of limited value on resale, however it can still be great advertising!
Digging in your heels and cursing the onrushing tide has worked so well for the RIAA.
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"Ohhhhhh ... an inteview with Lorne Michaels ..."
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Maybe I don't get it. What's wrong with them refusing YouTube and releasing on Joost, where they control the content, get revenue, and people get to watch it for 'free' (with advertising, which is how TV has worked for 50+ years).