November 1, 2006

YouTube pulls down Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park

Posted by Kate Sheppard at 1:04PM

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I can't resist returning this week with a little more on developments over at YouTube. This week's big news is what appears to be the beginning stages of a purge of copyrighted material, in this case at the request of Comedy Central.

YouTube was asked, and agreed, to begin taking down clips of Comedy Central material widely available on the site. This means farewell to all the Daily Show, Colbert Report and South Park bits that were part of the whole reason the site gained popularity in the first place.

According to the Washington Post, "YouTube said it plans to launch technology that will help it automatically identify copyrighted content."

In the same article, one YouTube user made this apt point:

"All the people who posted videos are volunteer marketers for Comedy Central," he said. "The network benefits from people talking about their programming, becoming the water-cooler chatter at the office. They've shot themselves in the foot."

The San Francisco Chronicle's culture blog bemoaned the move as a sign of YouTube's beginning slog toward irrelevance.

But is it? Many smart markets - Comedy Central not appearing to be among them - realize the value of this free marketing. Nike marketers have admitted to posting the companies ads on the site under more than one username, to increase the number of users they reach. And Pepsi is also tuned in to how to profit off this, launching their own branded channel via the site.

"By engaging with our consumers in these environments, we are strengthening the relevance of Pepsi Max to them," a Pepsi marketing exec in the U.K. told the press.

Also with an eye to the merits of YouTube are a number of campaign organizers for this year's mid-term elections. In many states, folks with usernames like "whitehouseforsenate" and "Cantwell2006" are posting their candidate's television advertisements on the site, as well as web-only advertisements - and giving expensive television spots new life in a free medium. A spin around the site makes distinguishing the hip campaigns from the not so hip ones a whole lot easier, and is good insight into who's tapped into youth culture and their consumption of media. I especially appreciate the ads of Nevada candidate Jack Carter - Jimmy's son - who doesn't look all that hip, but whose minimalist, straightforward ads are way more appealing the slampaigns we're all used to. Check out his web-only energy ad here or his wonderful "Thanks for the Add" MySpace video here.