The news late last week that Google had pulled thousands of clips from Comedy Central shows like “The Daily Show,” “The Colbert Report” and “South Park” from YouTube marked the end of YouTube as we know it.
YouTube was YouTube because it was cool. It was where you went to see clips from a recent Daily Show, or a recording from a Broadway show. By removing the copyrighted material Google is appeasing the media giants like Viacom (who also are a large Google advertiser) while alienating the young and technologically sophisticated audience that advertisers want to reach.
Google bought YouTube for the eyeballs. By removing the copyrighted material, traffic to YouTube will undoubtedly fall, thereby reducing the number of eyeballs that Google can sell ads too. That leaves you wondering what Google just spent $1.6 billion on. Maybe Mark Cuban was right!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Sherwood 10.31.06 at 5:13 pm
Beg to differ: YouTube has been striking deals with studios and content creators left and right. So yes, they have to remove pirated content when asked, but they’re doing a decent job of bringing-in (… and eventually, bringing back) licensed clips to replace them (with rev share to satisfy both parties.)
YouTube isn’t cool because it has pirated Daily Show clips - it’s cool because it has Daily Show clips. If they can counter the deletions in one category with interesting stuff from others, then people who continue to flock to them
Plus, from a marketing standpoint, YouTube’s compliance with studio requests is a great opener for their sales team to solicit a rev share agreement
Paul Drago 10.31.06 at 7:57 pm
Take a look at Comedy Central .com today. They are providing all their own shows now– they moved pretty quick to do that too.
David Wilson 11.01.06 at 9:29 am
I watched the Daily Show last night Paul and I noticed the advertisements for Comedycentral.com. Now all those people who went to YouTube to watch South Park, Daily Show and Colbert Report will head over to comedycentral.com I think is the biggest challenge that YouTube faces Sherwood. If you take the good content away from YouTube you are left with commercial, movie trailers and America’s funniest videos.
What has gone unmentioned is the news that MySpace (which sends a lot of traffc to YouTube) is cutting down on the copyrighted material they have. So YouTube is facing the possibility of declining traffic from its biggest referrer as well as reduced content on its site.
Sherwood 11.01.06 at 9:46 am
Comedycentral.com has always existed while YouTube has been around, and they’ve always had clips (I recall watching a few South Park clips way back.)
Lots of websites have their own content, but there’s something to be said for the content aggregator. People go to aggregators like YouTube, Technorati, and Google because experience tells them that they’re sure to find *something* they like.
The assumption we’testing here is: do people set out in search of specific video content, or are they looking for a type/genre of content?
If there are enough of the latter, then YouTube is sure to prosper. If there are far more of the former, then YouTube has to keep working on content deals with studios to ensure they’re well-stocked with the must-see videos people look for.