Viacom restores full Internet episodes of ‘Daily Show,’ ‘Colbert Report’

[freshwest]

Some earlier threads were discussing how Viacom and DirectTV were denying their viewers these two great shows. Some good news for us:

Viacom restores full Internet episodes of ‘Daily Show,’ ‘Colbert Report’

Returning from a two-week vacation on Monday, Stewart wasted no time ripping into his parent company. “You’re pulling the shows from the Internet?” he asked, looking shocked. “Viacom! What are you, China? And by the way, you don’t think the kids already have a workaround? This morning when I woke up, my 8-year-old son was watching Dark Knight Rises in 3D. They’re already figuring it out. So, basically you’re blocking old people from watching the show and just giving people a chance to discover that there’s other entertaining shit in the world...”

Viacom claims the episodes are available, but...

Stewart’s incredulity seems understandable, considering that the hosts of ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ have never seen their prior vacations accompanied by a corporate-imposed blackout of their own work on their own websites.

For its part, DirecTV continues to insist that Viacom is trying to extract an additional $1 billion to keep their 26 channels on the service. Viacom acknowledged that they demanded greater fees to air their channels on DirecTV, but they believe the price they named is roughly equitable to going market rates.

So, I guess DUers missing the show have a reprieve, or at least for a while. Video of Stewart's epic rant can be found near the bottom of the page:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/18/viacom-restores-internet-episodes-of-daily-show-colbert-report/

If this has been reported somewhere else, let me know and I will delete it. Just posting for their fans here.

[aquart]

1. Still on free Hulu.

[freshwest]

3. Are they as current as the other formats, which I can't view? I always loved hulu, although...

[frazzled]

2. He's right, you know

The Daily Show was on hiatus for two weeks, and then it was yanked from DirecTV (unfortunately, our provider). Three weeks is all it has taken to break me completely from our Daily Show habit. Which I now realize is all it was: something to do at 10 pm every night. Over the last three weeks we've watched old movies; read our books; and actually gone to bed early!

If something really great happens on the Daily Show, I know I'll be able to watch the clip elsewhere. It's so easy to kick a TV addiction. The side effects are minimal, and the recidivism is nearly nonexistent.

If Viacom doesn't want to lose 20 million viewers, it better sit down and knock heads with the beast, or they'll all be gone.

[freshwest]

4. Same thing goes for all that copyright mafia. Some is fair, some is out of line. I lived in an area

That at one time was a busy farming community. Over the years, various things occured to destroy it. There were Mennonites who moved away to larger pieces of land, the railway was shut down with the cotton gin, the tiny stores went out of business.

The older people had to go to nursing homes and their children had moved to metro areas for work. The old people's houses were left abandoned and boarded up since the state would own their assets for providing them long-term care and the kids didn't keep them up. Everything had been reduced a few landowners, most of whom had worked far away, and didn't live there.

But I few old hands talked to me about the way it was, when I asked about some of the bare spaces where was only a blinking light to show the ruins of where the town once was. They'd meet after their work was done on Friday nights in the gazebo there and entertain the community, singing and playing stringed instruments. Their other meeting places were the churches there, and the feed store, grocery and gas station, and the harness and blacksmith shop.

I knew some of those who manufactured iron works there, who were also pleased to see Obama's wind money stimulus come for their own work, and the profit of those who hauled the towers. And saw where the big landowners put in the windmills for power to be off grid. It wasn't like the area wasn't familiar with being off the grid as most homestead had then, or in the past, the older style windmills for water. Which works better than electric pumping, slow, gives the water time to run back into the sand.

Some of the people also bought the old post office to keep mail delivery and another tiny outbuilding for the telephone service. The post office was really a necessity in an outpost like that, as the nearest FedEx and UPS was fifty miles away and you had to drive to them.

The fire department was volunteer and we came into town a few times a year to donate at an auction, eat some great barbeque and buy baked goods to keep the fire department going. But there were no longer schools and children had to travel dozens of miles. Everything was dozens of miles away by the time I lived there. No groceries, feed store, gasoline or anything.

Now there's cable and internet, fiber optic telephone service and that's their entertainment. But most of them don't watch television or listen to the radio. I only had television because I had a big antenna installed to pull in broadcast signals from miles away. That was also an enviroment where you provided your own water and septic tank, had propane delivered or used wood, and if your well went dry and you couldn't afford to fix it, you were out of luck. Same as everything else.

[jjewell]

5. Why Viacom felt that non-Direct TV viewers...

who watch their shows on the internet should be penalized along with Direct TV subscribers in their corporate battle,
never made sense in the first place. The day after Jon Stewart reamed them on Monday night, they came to their senses...

[freshwest]

6. Yes, he was telling them the truth. People have choices and don't like these heavy handed actions.

[marble falls]

7. Fuck ol' Sumner, the greedy rightwing jack wad.

[freshwest]

8. No, you meant, fuck ALL greedy rightwing jack wads, didn't you? Let's be fair, now.

[marble falls]

9. Yes, but I just wanted a private word with this particular fuckwad at that moment.