Report: Entire 'Daily Show' going online
'The Daily Show' host Jon Stewart
(Credit: Comedy Central)About 13,000 video clips comprising the entirety of Comedy Central's fake-news program, The Daily Show With Jon Stewart will be hitting the its official Web site later in the day, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday morning.
They won't be full episodes, but rather short clips of segments from the program; the more individual files there are, after all, means that there are more opportunities for Comedy Central to insert advertisements. "Designers have been experimenting with ads that appear for two or three seconds at the start of a clip, recede, then emerge briefly from a corner of the picture like a network-TV promo while the video continues playing," the LA Times article noted.
If the thought of 13,000 clips seems overwhelming, the database will reportedly be searchable by both date and topic--so you can see, for example, everything Stewart ever said on your birthday, or everything he ever said about Capitol Hill punchline Larry Craig.
The clips will go back to Jon Stewart's debut in 1999, according to the Times; it does not appear that the Daily Show's earlier incarnation with Craig Kilborn as host, which ran from 1996 to 1998, will be available. Nor will there be such a database for clips from the popular Daily Show spinoff, The Colbert Report starring semi-rumored presidential candidate Stephen Colbert--at least not yet.
Representatives from Comedy Central have not yet returned calls for comment, but the Daily Show site features a blurb that says, "Get ready for something big--check back later today!"
Comedy Central is owned by Viacom, which has famously sued video-sharing site YouTube over copyright infringement . Earlier this month, YouTube parent company Google announced that it would debut an antipiracy tool for the service, but it's raised some eyebrows because it requires media companies to provide YouTube with their content in advance.
Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.
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