The Social

So either Jon Stewart is really on to something with his mad-as-hell crusade against financial hypocrisy and stupidity, or there are a lot of unemployed people watching Comedy Central clips to pass the time.

Either way, an on-air freakout by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli may have been one of the best things to happen to Comedy Central in months: Fake-news pundits Stewart (of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart") and Stephen Colbert (of "The Colbert Report") have seen traffic to their Web sites and online video clips soar after the two went on mocking vendettas against Santelli, fellow CNBC personality Jim Cramer, and the NBC Universal-owned business network in general.

Traffic to the shows' Web sites has been at its highest of the year so far in the past week, at over 60 percent their weekly average for 2009. ComedyCentral.com, which hosts video clips of both programs, also had its best traffic of the year, and the digital version of a viciously funny clip called "CNBC Gives Financial Advice" logged over 1.3 million views in a week, the sort of numbers usually reserved for grainy videos of cats behaving unnaturally.

Here's the back story: Santelli was supposed to appear on "The Daily Show" after his tirade about the federal government's economic bailout, but backed out abruptly. That's when Stewart and Colbert--but especially Stewart--turned up the heat. Stewart went on the aforementioned anti-CNBC rant on March 5, putting "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer squarely in his crosshairs. Cramer appeared on "The Colbert Report" the following night.

Now, Cramer is scheduled to make a "Daily Show" appearance on Thursday night.

Stewart and Colbert have been two of the most visible figures in cable television's slow crawl onto the Web. Not only are they wildly popular with young and tech-savvy audiences, but the segmented format of their talk shows lends itself well to being split into short clips and swapped via video-sharing sites, which meant that unauthorized clips of the two were some of YouTube's earliest hits. That's what indirectly led to Comedy Central parent company Viacom's massive copyright lawsuit against YouTube owner Google.

Later on, the full archives of both shows were made available on Comedy Central's Web site, and recent episodes are available in full on Hulu (as well as iTunes and Xbox Live).

Colbert, who started out as a commentator on "The Daily Show" before spinning off his blowhard persona into his own talk show, also owes a big chunk of his notoriety to the Web. Video of C-SPAN's coverage of the White House Press Correspondents' dinner three years ago, in which Colbert performed a shockingly blunt comedy routine that skewered then-President George W. Bush, was a huge hit on the Web among those who wouldn't have considered actually watching C-SPAN in the first place.

Last year, Colbert was honored by the annual Webby Awards as "Person of the Year." Take that, nonbelievers!

NEW YORK--The 12th annual Webby Awards Gala on Tuesday night was, unsurprisingly, an evening devoted to all things Internet. "Without the Internet, someone like Tila Tequila would have five or six friends, max," host Seth Meyers of Saturday Night Live quipped about the Web's ability to roll out cult micro-celebrities. "Without the Internet, only Ron Paul would know who Ron Paul is."

The quotable Colbert: 'Me, me, me, me, me.'

(Credit: Comedy Central)

The glitzy ceremony, held at a Greek Revival building that once housed the New York Stock Exchange and New York Merchants Exchange and now houses the upscale Cipriani Wall Street event space, celebrated just that. In a pastiche of entertainment awards shows, a moderately impressive red carpet featured Internet-famous folk in the line of "Obama Girl" and Ben Huh, the twentysomething guy from Seattle who's responsible for "I Can Has Cheezburger, as well as a few "real" celebrities like rappers Ludacris and Will.I.Am, and music icon David Byrne.

It was a marathon ceremony. With two awards given in each of a seemingly endless number of categories--a judge-chosen Webby and a vote-chosen "People's Voice"--there were so many winners that, in Webby tradition, each acceptance speech was limited to five words. So here, in an attempt to sum up the awards show without taking three more hours to do so, here are the Meta-Webbys: the best of the best of the Web's acceptance speeches.

Most memorable acceptance speech: Browser start-up Flock picked up the judge-chosen Webby in the Social Networking category, and the company founder used his five words to say, "No s***, we beat Facebook!" (Facebook went on to win the People's Voice award in the same category.)

Most predictable acceptance speech: Geek hero Stephen Colbert, receiving the Person of the Year award for his portrayal of an egomaniacal blowhard pundit on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, went onstage as Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." played, and proclaimed, "Me, me, me, me, me!"

Corollary: Colbert's pop-culture influence was reflected in Facebook's acceptance of the People's Voice award in the Social Networking category--"One million strong for Colbert!"--as well as FactCheck.org's acceptance speech in the Politics category, "Where truthiness goes to die." FactCheck won another award later in the evening; the site's second acceptance speech was, "No, Obama's not a Muslim."

Most productive speech: "We're hiring, send us resumes" from ad agency Tribal DDB in one of the Interactive Advertising categories.

Worst play on words: Conde Nast's Style.com picked up an award in the Fashion category and used its five words to say, "Guess we're still in fashion."

Runner-up: VH1's Best Week Ever, in the Celebrity category, "Who let the blogs out?"

Most professionally appropriate speech: The American Bar Association's ABA Journal, in the Law category, "Had we lost, we'd sue."

Geekiest acceptance speech: A representative from ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi picked up an Interactive Advertising Webby for a Toyota Tacoma ad campaign, held up the Slinky-like metal trophy, and said, "My robot costume is complete."

Best onstage stunt: Picking up the People's Voice award in the Best Practices category, Digg marketing manager Aubrey Sabala chugged a glass of champagne and proclaimed, "Webbys 'dugg' for the free drinks."

Best use of two awards: The "Happiness Factory" ad campaign for Coca-Cola picked up two awards; the representative accepting the award from agency Shift Control Media used his first five words to say "Seth, your fly is open" and his second, an hour later, to say, "Still down, Seth, getting creepy."

The "And it sounds even better in your sulty Greek accent" award: Liberal news pundit and IADAS member Arianna Huffington, receiving the award in the Blog - Political category, proclaimed "President Obama sounds good, right?"

Least shocking surprise of the evening: In between rounds of awards, host Seth Meyers said he was going to show a video tribute to members of the Web community who had died in the past year, and showed part of Rick Astley's corny "Never Gonna Give You Up" video instead. Seth, Rickrolling is so over.

Most shocking surprise of the evening: In an interview on the red carpet, Ben Huh, the owner of kitty humor site I Can Has Cheezburger said that he's allergic to cats. Clad in a white suit and a massive hat shaped like a cheeseburger, I guess he also gets the Best Dressed nod.

Yaaaay! Stephen Colbert on Hulu!

(Credit: Comedy Central)

This post was updated at 11:01 AM PT on Tuesday to clarify wording: television content from Viacom is almost exclusively handled by MTV Networks.

In an unexpected move, video site Hulu will be getting some political loudmouths just in time for the 2008 presidential election: Comedy Central's late-night personalities Jon Stewart of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report.

We had to check and make sure the press release wasn't a joke, but there are indeed full episodes from both programs available. It comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering Comedy Central parent company Viacom has not officially signed on to Hulu, which launched as a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp. and does not yet have any other major networks on board.

But on the other hand, MTV Networks, the Viacom division that encompasses Comedy Central, has made some distribution deals, and both Stewart and Colbert were already available on the Web in one form or another. And Viacom had already made select content available to Hulu rival Joost, but now that the Joost hype has faded completely, experimenting with Hulu's ad-supported distribution seems logical. Making the popular Comedy Central talk shows available could be the media conglomerate's way of dipping a toe in the water.

Additionally, later in June Hulu will start to add select programs from PBS: Nova, Carrier, Scientific American Frontiers, Wired Science, and potentially others.

This bring's Hulu's count of programming content partners up to more than 70.

He might not get to fulfill his presidential dreams, but comic pundit Stephen Colbert will still end 2008 with at least one, uh, honor: Person of the Year at the 12th Annual Webby Awards.

The "Oscars of the Internet," presented by a consortium of technology, media, and entertainment hotshots known as the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, announced their winners and honorees on Tuesday. This year's Webbys will be presented next month as part of Internet Week New York.

Colbert received the Person of the Year accolade for his reputation as a digital buccaneer of sorts: over the past year and a half, his Colbert Report show on Comedy Central has prompted Google bombing, Wikipedia vandalism, what might have been the fastest-growing Facebook group in history, and (on a completely different note) hundreds of thousands of dollars for DonorsChoose.org when he promoted it on air.

Stephen Colbert: comedian, pundit, Web renegade, Webby honoree.

(Credit: Comedy Central)

The Webby Film and Video Awards, an offshoot of the Webbys proper, selected filmmaker Michel Gondry as its Person of the Year: Gondry's latest flick, Be Kind Rewind, sparked a trend in "sweding" (low-budget "remakes" of movies) on the likes of YouTube, and Gondry has made an online-video splash himself, with seemingly impossible Rubik's Cube puzzle clips.

The Webbys' "Artist of the Year" award went to Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am for his "Yes We Can" song and video in support of presidential candidate Barack Obama.

For a full list of Webby winners, which include Flickr, Facebook, I Can Has Cheezburger, Yelp, Digg, Apple, The New York Times, TED Conferences, HuffingtonPost.com, Kiva, Mint, PostSecret, and CNET Networks' Chow, click here.

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Shortly after the nascent Stephen Colbert '08 presidential campaign filed to run on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina's primary, the state party voted on Thursday to kick the colorful comedian out of the race. According to the Associated Press, party officials met for approximately 40 minutes and then voted 13-3 to remove Colbert from the ballot.

Meanwhile, many members of the "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" group on Facebook, which currently hovers around 1,300,000 in membership, refuse to give up.

"I think it's stupid that they are trying to put a stop to his campaign because they believe it is just a ploy to further his comedy routine," one infuriated member of the Colbert Nation wrote on the message board for the "1,000,000 Strong" group. "From what I have seen he is probably the most realistic person running right now."

"You know what?" another asked. "If Arnold Schwarzenegger can be governor of California, then Stephen Colbert can certainly be president. What's wrong with these people?"

Others started posting telephone numbers for the state Democratic Party's office and began linking to offshoot groups to promote a Colbert write-in campaign.

Colbert, who hosts the Comedy Central program The Colbert Report, announced last month that he planned to run for president--but only in South Carolina as a "favorite son."

On a related note, Thursday was a sad day for purveyors of the green screen challenge everywhere: in addition to Colbert's rejection from the Democratic primary, indie-rock band and onetime Colbert foe The Decemberists canceled the remainder of their North American tour.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Update at 7:19 a.m. PDT: Facebook comment added.

Stephen Colbert should consider naming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as his running mate* in his quasi-legitimate presidential campaign; the social-networking site has been the political satirist's prime rallying grounds.

Sometime on Thursday night, a Facebook fan group for Colbert's campaign met its membership goal of 1 million Facebook members--and the group was founded just over a week ago.

The group, "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" (the "T" stands for Tyrone, for the record) was started by a Facebook user shortly after The Colbert Report host announced that he was going to enter the presidential primary in his home state of South Carolina as a "favorite son." It's a take-off on the "1,000,000 Strong for Barack Obama" Facebook group, which has yet to crack 400,000 members after nine months. The equivalent Colbert group took just over a week to hit a million.

"Colbert-Zuckerberg '08" does have a nice ring to it.

Several blogs have asserted that this is the fastest-growing group in Facebook's history. I find that very easy to believe, but there is no official confirmation: Facebook says it neither tabulates how fast groups grow nor offers a central list of the biggest groups on the site. (Facebook execs presumably have other things on their mind, like this whole "Microsoft thing.")

On the more serious side of things, the light-hearted enthusiasm over Colbert's "presidential campaign" could be a sign that young American voters are getting sick of Election 2008's career politicians have already been plastered all over the media. The really scary part: there's still over a year to go in this race.

Meanwhile, Editor and Publisher reports that not only will the mayor of Columbia, S.C., declare this coming Sunday "Stephen Colbert Day" when the "favorite son" comes for a visit, but that polling firm Rasmussen has actually bothered to include Colbert in a telephone survey that pitted him against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani.

Nation, these are frightening times we live in.

*Yes, yes, I know that it probably breaks election law for the 23-year-old Zuckerberg to appear on a campaign ticket, and I also know that he's probably too busy taking over the world to bother with politics.

The dashingly handsome Stephen Colbert, self-proclaimed 'favorite son' of South Carolina

(Credit: Comedy Central)

The thought of a comedian running for president might have been the plot of a tepid Robin Williams movie until recently, but now there are signs that faux pundit Stephen Colbert may actually want to dip his patriotic toes in the (shark-infested) campaign pool.

Colbert formally announced on Tuesday's episode of his spoof talk show, The Colbert Report, that he intends to run for president. More specifically, he aims to get his name on the ballot for both the Democratic and Republican primaries in his home state of South Carolina as a "favorite son."

"And not my mother's favorite son," Colbert explained. "She is much too fair-minded to ever show a preference between the eight of us. Right, Mom?"

It's no surprise that Colbert, with his over-the-top blowhard-egotist act, would make jokes about wanting to end up in the Oval Office. He's been talking about it for weeks on shows like Larry King Live and even in a New York Times op-ed column. But here's the shocker: After Tuesday night's show, people are starting to get the idea that he might not be kidding.

Earlier that evening on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, on which Colbert used to play a (fake) reporter, he formally announced that he would, well, be making a formal announcement. "I, Stephen Colbert, am officially announcing that I will officially consider whether or not I will announce that I am running for president of the United States."

But on Tuesday's Colbert Report, which occupies the time slot after The Daily Show on the Viacom-owned Comedy Central, Colbert made it less fuzzy. "I have heard the call," he declared. "Nation, I shall seek the office of the president of the United States!" He then erupted into a sort of reverie as red, white, and blue balloons cascaded from the ceiling.

Neither Comedy Central nor Colbert's personal publicist have issued statements on whether the comedian will actually attempt to get on the ballot, which has left many--including South Carolina's major political parties--on the edge as to whether the announcement should be taken seriously.

"If Stephen fulfills the requirements met in our delegates' election plan and he actively campaigns in South Carolina, we welcome him to compete," said Joe Werner, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, in an interview with CNET News.com. Werner added that representatives from The Colbert Report had placed calls to the state party's headquarters several weeks ago but that the party thought it was all a joke at the time.

Fulfilling the requirements, however, will be the tough part. Party regulations, Werner said, prevent Colbert from attempting to run on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. "It's in our rules somewhere that you can't be on two ballots," he explained. "He'd have to pick one party."

Representatives from the South Carolina Republican Party were not readily available for comment.

At 43, Stephen Tyrone Colbert would be the youngest contender in the major parties' candidate roster. (Barack Obama is 46.) Colbert would additionally be the first presidential candidate to be banned from Wikipedia (which, ironically, has named his buzzword "truthiness" as its article of the day for October 17), have a mass-market ice cream flavor named after him, and have an extensive repertoire of YouTube videos in which he prances around with a Star Wars lightsaber. Currently, he's riding high on the bestseller lists with his book I Am America, And So Can You!

It could still be a huge joke on all of us. The late comedian Pat Paulsen, after all, was using "I'm running for president" as a stand-up routine in the mid-20th century, over the course of multiple election cycles.

But considering Colbert's prominence as a geek hero, there's no question that fast-spreading buzz on the Web would only add to the anticipation over whether he'll run. Rumors floated in 2005, stemming from the appearance of an "official" Web site that turned out to be a hoax, that oddball actor Christopher Walken would be running for president. (In the words of one CNET News.com commenter, "Too bad. America's got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!")

Colbert, like Walken, would likely be an instant Internet favorite.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

I don't think I've been this psyched for a Colbert Report episode since Stephen Colbert took on the Decemberists. On Wednesday, August 22, an unscripted tiff between the Comedy Central comedian and billionaire Sir Richard Branson, which swirled up quite a bit of chatter in the blog rumor mill, will be shown in that night's episode of the faux-pundit talk show.

The segment, originally cut from the program, depicts Virgin Group mogul Branson dumping a cup of water on Colbert in a manner that was rumored to be less-than-friendly. It was considered particularly out-of-line, considering the close ties between the two geek heroes--one of the planes in the new tech-friendly Virgin America fleet, after all, is called the "Air Colbert."

Sir Richard Branson

(Credit: Virgin Group)

A statement from Virgin USA, obtained by FishbowlNY, suggests that there was no delay in airing the segment, contrary to popular belief. The company insisted that "Richard enjoyed his time with Stephen, and the splash was part of the fun."

So, Colbert might no longer be "on notice" with Sir Richard, but YouTube still apparently wants his head on a platter (but a well-designed platter from the Googleplex's all-you-can-eat cafeteria, of course).