Much has been made, recently, about Comedy Central's decision to require YouTube to pull copies of the Daily Show, Cobert Report, and South Park. The move has been almost uniformly condemned as being foolish, and a good way for Comedy Central to alienate its fans, resulting in fewer live viewers.
But in a simplistic sense, it's the right move. Any service that uses ad impressions as their primary source of revenue must attempt to curtail any situation that reduces the number of eyes seeing those ads.
Or replace it.
Comedy Central and other services need to make YouTube part of their revenue stream ... either with the same business model or a new one. Not just as hooks to get live viewers, or free research with which to determine which episodes should be in "best of" DVD releases (the only kind of DVD release likely to be viable with a current events show), but as ad impression-generators as well. To make this desirable and successful, YouTube will need to facilitate the process ... soliciting contributions from companies like Comedy Central that have advertising incorporated in the video, preventing unapproved copies of the video, and providing verifiable metrics on viewers.
Unfortunately, it may be too late now. If this had been done instead of pulling all the Comedy Central content, fans might have embraced the convenience, even if they had to suffer through the same ads (although I'd hope Comedy Central would recognize the need for shorter ads in that context) ... but now the same act would be seen less as an attempt on Comedy Central's part to provide value to viewers and customers, and more a blatantly mercenary act done with total disregard for the viewers. Comedy Central, without extreme creativity, can only be the villain, now. YouTube can be the hero.
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