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Viacom's Messy Relationship With YouTube and The Rise of Stephen Colbert
Presto Vivace writes with this story about how Stephen Colbert became a YouTube Megastar. "Clips from The Colbert Report soon became a staple at YouTube, a startup that was making it easier for anyone and everyone to upload and watch home movies, video blogs, and technically-illicit-but-increasingly-vanilla clips of TV shows from the day before. And Colbert’s show was about to find itself at the center of a conflict between entertainment media and the web over online video that’s shaped the last decade. In fact, The Colbert Report has been defined as much by this back-and-forth between Hollywood and the web as by the cable news pundits it satirizes....A year after The Colbert Report premiere, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock. Five months later, Viacom sued YouTube and Google for copyright infringement, asking for $1 billion in damages. The value of these videos and their audiences were clear. The Colbert Report and “Stephen Colbert” are mentioned three times in Viacom’s complaint against YouTube, as much or more than any other show or artist."
Steven Colbert doesn't work for CBS, his show is sold to Comedy Central and his future project is sold to CBS.
The Daily Show and Colbert report are part of Comedy Partners Inc., which was first the joint venture name for Viacom and AOL Time Warner when they shared the Comedy Central network, but is now the company headed by Jon Stewart that supplies the programs to Comedy Central.
Colbert is moving to replace David Letterman on Late Show, but that project is owned by Worldwide Pants which has run Late Night/Late Show since the beginning. CBS buys the right to broadcast it.