Miscellaneous Travis Hite on 13 Nov 2007 02:01 am
My website has a first name, it’s “I-R-O-N-Y”
It wasn’t exactly all that long ago that I posted on clips from The Daily Show that finally saw the light of the Internet again after Viacom forced YouTube to remove all copyrighted content. Something about Viacom posting thousands of clips from the show, hand picking the selection even, seemed pretty cool. Of course, they have ads at the end of the clips, but it could easily be worse. Then, the WGA strike occurred. I’m currently not feeling that pain, as my copy of “I Am America (And So Can You)” is keeping that warm spot in my heart reserved for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report warm, but eventually I will be done with this book, and rereading “America (The Book)” will eventually get tiresome. As a side note, Comedy Central book writers, I am on to your naming scheme.
Still, I see these videos with direct advertisements posted on their webpage and I have to wonder how much they’re making per clip. I can imagine a world where they might be doing little more than breaking even on these clips, but honestly that is hard to swallow, especially as YouTube itself has very little in way of advertisement yet manages to give residuals for popular clips.
That said, the cooperate take on Internet content is as follows:
“New media has proven to be an effective and cost-effective promotional and marketing tool for both films and television but there is not enough marketplace data to judge its true potential, ultimate impact on traditional media or viability as a business.”
Is that so? So, the billion dollar lawsuit, the half billion expected revenue, the time and effort spent developing a website to raise past episodes from the archives for the joy and pleasure of netizens…these are all promotional tools to be used by the company. Clearly this whole Internet thing is a fad, and traditional media is going nowhere. The fact that CD and DVD sales are dropping as downloadable content continues to rise is just a fluke and has no correlating data to show that it is a potentially continuous trend. After all, there was a dot com bubble burst before, who’s to say it won’t happen again?
I’m sorry, I believe I just choked on my own sarcasm. I suppose, after all, we have to back up our claims of profitability with actual proof, after all we can’t just take the words of a bunch of pissed off writers. After all, they’re paid to tug at our emotions. Perhaps it would be better to hear it all straight from the horse’s mouth?
I present to you, your noose.
[For more interesting facts on the WGA strike, check out United Hollywood]
One Response to “My website has a first name, it’s “I-R-O-N-Y””
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
on 04 Dec 2007 at 12:16 pm 1.No Soap Box: Where Media and Politics Collide » Yo Ho Ho Ho, A Pirate’s Life For Me said …
[…] Debate continues to rage over how much piracy hurts media sales. While the industry would like to promote a one-to-one loss of sales, the real number is perhaps far less. Often, people take it as a system of “trying it out.” Granted, DVD and CD sales are continuing to decline, but the entertainment industry overall has never been as strong as it is now. As well, many are critical of the various industries themselves which often seem to take money from the artists and continue to pump themselves up. With the WGA strike currently in full swing, and the countless RIAA debacles, controversy has never been higher. Even EMI, one of the “big four” music labels, is reducing its funding to the RIAA. EMI is generally regarded as the most forward-thinking of the major labels, and this is a sign of a distancing of themselves from the generally unpopular association. […]