Jon Stewart, Lorne Michaels Come Out In Favour of YouTube 114
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."
Denial (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, its called viral marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Denial (Score:3, Insightful)
Why don't they get it? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Who cares, he is not the owner (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Not only that... (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
There's too much liability at stake (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Re:TV Stations that "get it" (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to be flamebait or say it's right, but maybe this explains the issues Aussies seem to have getting television shows imported from the States in less than two years. They don't want to show the current season and have someone legally be able to stick it up on YouTube while they're trying to sell the DVD box set still.
No, you don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:TV Stations that "get it" (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to be flamebait or say it's right, but maybe this explains the issues Aussies seem to have getting television shows imported from the States in less than two years. They don't want to show the current season and have someone legally be able to stick it up on YouTube while they're trying to sell the DVD box set still.
The ABC shows almost no American television, so their content policies are irrelevant. Blame the commercial channels or better yet, ignore them and download your favourite shows. Frankly I've given up on Australian commercial television like they've given up on the Australian creative industry in favour of rehashed and increasingly moronic reality television.
Re:Sigh. Self interest wins again. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Denial (Score:4, Insightful)