Past Deadline

You Supply the Web Site, CBS Supplies the Content

Sounds too good to be true? Well, believe it. CBS, like a honeybee on speed, is pollenating the internet with its programs and promos.

   "CBS is all about open, nonexcusive, multiple partnerships," said Quincy Smith, CBS Interactive president. "We like to call this the 'Swingtown' philosophy." It's an inside joke, at least for now. "Swingtown" is a CBS midseason series about couples in the '60s with open marriages.

Some networks jealously guard their shows, allowing them to be seen only on their own web site. Not CBS. It already has 24 internet partners, including AOL.com, msn.com, Cnet and comcast.com. It expects to be on more than 400 sites by the end of fall. Plus, you can still go to CBS.com.

CBS will let you embed their content. Use your player or one of theirs. Adapt it to your web site. Pick and choose only the shows you like. CBS doesn't care. Just put it out there.

Meanwhile, if you don't find CBS content, it will find you. CBS went to search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and others, and bought all the keywords associated with every one of its stars, its concepts, its programs and its schedule, Smith said.

That may mean that, if you do a search on "The Big Bang Theory," a new CBS comedy, the network will show up long before all the porn sites appear.

Smith can't understand why anyone would spend the time and money building their own site to promote their shows when they can just piggyback on what is already out there. "That seems absurd," he said. "If they want to be on AOL or Cnet, that's great. Why spend money building up a new destination when you can just syndicate your content out there?"

Next thing you know, you'll be seeing CBS promos on your cell phone. Oops. That deal was struck, too.

Posted by Barry Garron

It's All A Matter of Taste

How very nice of them.

Because aren't we all a little sickened by the crass, tasteless way executions are usually shown on TV?

Oh, wait, they aren't.

And with luck, this one won't be aired, either. Yesterday, I sat next to the TV reporter who covered this story, Paul Gough, and overheard him chasing down the network folks who might happen to be working this week to get some kind of commentary. (Somehow, during the weeks that should be the least busy, some of the most desperate news comes to light.) This is Paul's beat –- covering the way the news covers stories, as opposed to covering the stories themselves –- and he does a ripping job getting folks to talk. 

What he managed to pull out is that ABC and CBS have no plans to air videotape of Saddam Hussein's execution, while NBC, CNN and Fox are still in a wait-and-see attitude. Al-Jazeera did not return calls, but according to Paul's story, the channel has never shown an execution, either. 

Paul told me that since the Iraq war, the question of how to tastefully report on the more graphic side of the news has come up frequently. "Even in the Saddam Hussein trial there were pictures of victims who were gassed or shot that couldn't really be broadcast on American television," he said. Once his article came out yesterday, Paul was reminded by an email sent to of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Al-Qaeda leader who was killed in an air strike this past June. Pictures of the dead al-Zarqawi, and separately Uday and Qusay Hussein, turned up for broadcast, and there was discussion about how to air them (or not) at the time. More infamous are the tapes of beheaded Americans Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl. The latter two are available for viewing in full –- links to sites that host the tapes pop up a the top of a simple Google search. 

"These are decisions they make all the time," Paul said. "They have the tapes –- I talked to someone who was walking by (a tape machine) at the networks (while the video was playing) and saw it and still doesn't feel good about it." 

Regardless of network decisions, there's little doubt that Hussein's execution, like Berg and Pearl's, will eventually make it onto the Internet. All of us –- all of us People of the Year –- will make sure that's possible, even if they don't turn up on YouTube or Google Video. 

Whether that's fitting on not requires more subtle consideration. I don't personally want to support any network –- cable or broadcast -– that will air an execution, live or taped. No matter how wretchedly horrible that individual was, to air it somehow allies us with him. And watching it, or being in charge of airing it, won't make any of us feel like we're somehow more civilized, that's for certain. 

That said, I'm not certain I mind if the tape turns up in some repository in the common brain. The Internet has many dark corners and closeted histories, as do individuals and cultures. To fail to allow a place for them to exist denies not just our humanity, but our willingness to acknowledge that we do have a lesser, baser nature –- every one of us. Information exists, it's how we deal with it that matters. Shutting it up doesn't make it go away. 

We're all people of the year, according to Time –- and this includes Saddam Hussein, who for all we know downloaded a BitTorrent or two before his capture. That there is discussion over what to air, if to air anything, is healthy. Paul says he's sure that the question isn't about ratings points -– "the networks' job is to show what happened in the news. There's always healthy debates about taste issues, and networks have standards and practices they have to follow." 

At least, that's a start. If ad dollars aren't a driving factor when the news is this bleakly graphic, then perhaps the news programs can still hold at least a jagged edge of the moral high ground. The schadenfreude we may experience from knowing that Saddam Hussein is no longer on the planet is not something that should be quantified in ratings points.

-- Randee Dawn

YouTube loses its funny

The party's over.

Head on over to YouTube today, and try and click on any number of Comedy Central-related clips -- of which there are hundreds, including "South Park," "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" -- and you will see the message linked above.

Based on blog reports (including one at the revered Boing Boing), YouTube has begun mailing members with cease and desist style notices, citing copyright infringement, and isn't waiting for members to take down the videos themselves; they're just stripping them clean.

This can't come as much of a surprise; once Google made the site a $1.65 billion business, it opened up some deep pockets that make it ripe for litigation. And like a snowball gathering speed, momentum and volume in the past weeks, YouTube is going to be Just Like Everywhere Else now.

What it is, however, is classic big business hubris that will lessen not just public opinion of Comedy Central, but of YouTube. One of the primary reasons YouTube was worth $1.65 billion is that fans knew they could host and view the clips they wanted to see, when they wanted to see them, there. YouTube turned a blind eye to copyright infringement; Comedy Central turned the same blind eye. Both profited and benefited from this "I can't hear you, la la la" mentality -- they earned publicity, goodwill among users (many of whom are likely already viewers or Apple subscribers), and viewers got what they wanted.

And if Comedy Central thinks they're already giving viewers what they want on their own site, they're in for a rude awakening. One blogger has listed the reasons YouTube is superior to Comedy Central's viewer, noting:

You have tiny little videos that can’t be resized. It’s like watching TV from the next room through the keyhole of a closed door.

He's also got a thought or two on the whole CC Web site:

Flashing banner ads? Is that some kind of a Comedy Central joke that’s over my head? There’s this company called Google that showed everybody that annoying your customers isn’t necessary to get them to click on things. Instead, their idea is to give people what they want. You might also want to check out their website for some layout ideas.

So, here we are, copyright flags waved, videos removed, and nobody's happy. YouTube is on its way to being the Friendster of the year. What no one who tries to harness the Internet seems to yet understand is that it expands, contracts and spreads organically. Put a leash on it, and those who made it so popular in the first place run off to another spot that doesn't require such restrictions. As we've reported here recently, there'll no doubt be some kind of pirate site up within hours -- if there isn't already -- which will host not just clips of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" (we know there are already tons of sites for "South Park" episodes) but whole episodes. For a time, YouTube had that beast under control, and now -- it's over.

YouTube is dead. Long live the next YouTube.

-- Randee Dawn

UPDATE (10/31): A random search for "South Park," "Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" turns up clips still present and accounted for on YouTube -- and playing just fine. Perhaps there's been a little corporate re-thinking here.

Tossing the DVD and TV set altogether ... Part 2

R.I.P. "AllSimps.com."

Yeah, we reported it on September 27; sometime between then and now, the site which purported to provide pretty much every "Simpsons" episode for easy, non bit-torrented download, is gone with the Schwinn.

From the site:

I have been asked by fox to close this site. Thank you

I do think my site was legal, but I'm sure Fox doesn't think so and I dont want to take the risk. So...

Here are links to other sites that inspired me to create this one.

Heh.

The good news -- at least, depending on how you look at it -- is that there are any number of sites out there willing to pick up the torch and start running (for "The Simpsons," "South Park," "Family Guy" or other shows), until doused with a bucket of "cease and desist" water from the legal folks. My personal favorite has a very un-PC name, but what makes them the most fun right now is that their front page has a pissy warning (provided here, poor punctuation and language included):

Updated October 15th:
Other sites are stealing our shit. We work hard finding these episodes, then sorting through them and bringing them to you. Then other assholes are copying our exact HTML, (javascript and all) and putting their names on it. If this keeps happening the cartoon portal is going to be member's only. Sorry.

Hee! They're completely ticked that the stuff they stole ... is being stolen. Hubris, thy nickname is Internet.

But on the other side, Denial, thy name is Network/Cable TV. No matter how many Googles merge with YouTubes, no matter how many suits file suits, the fact is that the software is out there to make these files, the will is out there thanks to people with a lot of time on their hands and the know-how, and the TV shows are out there. Cut off one head, and two more sprout up in its wake.

-- Randee Dawn

Now You Can Watch TV Without Watching TV!

Apparently, the future doesn't come in big jolts: It is the torture of a thousand tiny cuts. Welcome to the future of television on the Internet, at least until the broadcasters and/or cable masters decide this is a very, very bad idea. (I'll wager on the folks over at HBO, Cartoon Network and USA Network, and their buddies, getting their knickers in a knot first, though.)

The future whereof I speak -- and let's face it, it's not like this stuff cropped up on the Web yesterday -- looks a lot like Viidoo, a device with a name apparently composed by a 3-year old. The site has an easy interface: A screen you'd like to use, a list of channels (including HBO, which last I checked, is considered "premium"),  message board -- even  a helpful listing of programming coming up. In moments you can download the program and find yourself watching any of a number of national or international channels with a quick click, and a relatively short buffer time. HBO wasn't listed on the version I downloaded (there's a Beta version you have to be invited to, and I suspect the best stuff is there), but I was able to clue into a Sam Elliot flick on "Hollywood Plus," and caught a few minutes of the European RTL channel showing a Green Day Video. Al-Jazeera, although listed as an option, did not come up. Sabotage!

Then there's Neave.TV, which might just look like a pre-loaded collection of oddities, music videos and film shorts, but whose splash page indicates it is an "experimental use of video on the Web" powered by Blip.TV, Google Video and You Tube. It's Sunday, so reps from those networks are in scant supply, which makes it difficult to figure out if they're supporting this actively, or just passively (with videos), but what's really dazzling about Neave.TV is that it appears to have no buffer lag time, either on first boot up or on switching from one "channel" to the next, and the way it fills up the full browser with fairly decent-quality video. Nobody's going to confuse this with HD-TV, but it's the closest I've seen my 5 year old Dell monitor look to an actual television set.

Will these channels be here in six months? I'd be surprised if they're around in two. Surely, someone's going to issue a "cease and desist," or at least a "cease or pay me some royalties, you bottom-skimmers," but I think the train's already left the station. When corporations can't come up with their own creative ways of harnessing their programming on the Internet, and just instead decide to piggyback on Google, You Tube and other third parties, this is what's going to happen. For now, please excuse me: I need to get back to my Sam Elliot film. Subtitled, by the way, in Chinese.

-- Randee Dawn