viacom

Update at 7:59 a.m. PST: A RealNetworks representative quashes a rumor about a RealNetworks-MTV joint venture.

The long-expected layoffs at Viacom, parent company of MTV Networks, have finally taken place.

According to an internal memo (first leaked to gossip blog Gawker), 850 positions have been cut. That amounts to 7 percent of the company's workforce.

"Our advantages and best efforts can't completely protect Viacom from the very serious and broad-based challenges of this economic recession," CEO Philippe Dauman wrote in the e-mail. "Viacom's long-term health will depend on our shared commitment to … Read more

The Viacom-owned cable network took Jokes.com, a property it acquired in 2002, and relaunched it Wednesday as a hub for its stand-up comedy archives. Sort of like a Hulu for stand-up comedy, it's debuting with over 5,000 video clips (embeddable and shareable, naturally) and 12,000 text-based jokes that are searchable by topic ("George W. Bush" or "holidays") and by comedian. A "Comedians A-Z" database provides information on different stand-up comics and … Read more

A new kind of video advertising is coming to MySpace.

The company has partnered with a video advertising company, Auditude, and Viacom's MTV Networks division, to bring Auditude's video ads to MTV content on the News Corp.-owned social network's MySpaceTV video hub.

Here's how Auditude works: it can detect MTV Networks content if either MTVN itself or a MySpace user uploads it, and then it implements both targeted ads and "attribution ads," which provide data about the source of the programming. (For example: an "attribution ad" for Comedy Central talk show … Read more

As their case grinds away in the courts, Google and Viacom continue to take shots at each other.

Google's announcement that it has paid $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits brought by book publishers and authors is welcome news to Viacom and other copyright owners. Viacom, the behemoth entertainment company that filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google and YouTube last year, took the opportunity to compare the book publishers' case with its own.

"Copyright laws provide creators with the incentive to create the works consumers crave," Viacom said in a statement Tuesday. "It … Read more

It seems like the only complaint that the cranky digital-media press can come up with for MTVMusic.com, the legendary pop-culture brand's new music video hub, is, "Why wasn't this here years ago?"

Yeah, yeah, we know. There are licensing issues, especially for all those campy '80s videos that haven't seen the light of day in years. And launching a product prematurely could have led to bad press, as opposed to the "wow, we like this" response that MTV Music seems to have gotten thus far.

The issue, of course, is that most … Read more

Saturday Night Live helped make YouTube famous, and Tina Fey's recent appearances have led to big traffic spikes at NBC.com and Hulu.

So why shouldn't the long-running TV show have its own Web site?

Seth Meyers spilled the beans last week on an ESPN podcast that SNL was in talks to build a site that would feature clips of show sketches, including material never before aired.

A move like this makes sense. Viacom has built branded sites around its most popular shows, such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The idea is to build Web … Read more

Over the weekend, Larry Lessig penned a cogent argument for a common-sense reading of copyright law. The problem, he writes, is that in our attempts to quash peer-to-peer file-sharing (stealing), we're wreaking a huge amount of collateral damage on those that remix content.

In other words, all piracy is not created equal. Some, like the remixers, should be protected by US Fair Use doctrine:

We are in the middle of something of a war here -- what some call "the copyright wars"; what the late Jack Valenti called his own "terrorist war," where the "… Read more

Once the global leader in youth culture, MTV's attempts to address the social-networking craze have seemed a little puzzling sometimes (the Twittering Moon Man?) But now we've seen another piece of the entertainment brand's puzzle: Backchannel, a play-while-you watch game that's one part chat room, one part Digg, and one part Mystery Science Theater with a Mean Girls twist.

It's debuting on Monday night with that evening's episode of wildly popular reality-soap The Hills.

Here's how Backchannel works: Watch the show (for now, only The Hills is on Backchannel, but later this fall … Read more

Victor Rook, an indy filmmaker who was once wrongly accused by Viacom of copyright violations, is happy a judge has reminded media companies to think twice before calling someone a pirate.

In February 2007, Viacom demanded that YouTube remove Rook's documentary about a professional wrestler, accusing him of using some of the company's copyright material. The conglomerate was mistaken. None of the video or music Rook included in his film belonged to Viacom. Executives at the company apologized but the filmmaker still had to wait three weeks before the clip was reposted to YouTube, which he says hurt … Read more