The Daily Show with Jon Stewart launched a revamped website today, complete with 13,000 streaming videos that you can find by keyword or date. Is this the future of online TV programming?
Digital Journal — If you can’t get enough fake news weeknights watching The Daily Show, then now Jon Stewart and his correspondents are available 24/7 online at their newly launched site, TheDailyShow.com. Close to 13,000 videos can be viewed, and the videos are not full episodes but clips of each segment.
There’s a catch but it’s minimally intrusive. Ads appear at the beginning of each segment, running for no longer than seven seconds. Ads also bookend each segment, but the viewer can click away at that point. Also, a company’s logo or marketing line appear briefly in the segment and then recedes while the video continues to play. A test of the site found a Hyundai ad appear before a 2006 clip, and then a superimposed logo floated under Stewart’s desk for three seconds and disappeared.
The site’s home page will focus on the previous night’s episode, where clips will be posted by 8 a.m. EST the following morning. The database also includes the ability to search for clips based on keyword or timeline — an intuitive slider tool at the top of the page lets the visitor search for a particular episode on any date. However, a Digital Journal test revealed that the beta site still needs to work out some kinks, because two searches for a 2005 date revealed “No results found.”
But the keyword search worked wonderfully. A search for videos containing the tag word “immigration” pulled up 41 videos, some dating back as far as 2,000. Visitors can even search for their favourite correspondent, such as past favourite — and current star of The Office — Steve Carell. Perusing through 290 clips of Carell classics is already making TheDailyShow.com a worthwhile venture for Comedy Central to pursue.
Television executives should look to TheDailyShow.com as a role model to emulate. Never before has a show compiled its entire archive online, available free, and easily searchable using a Google search bar. If Comedy Central, and parent company Viacom, continue to explore online opportunities for their high-rating shows, the real winners will be the viewers. There’s immense value in marrying TV and Internet, and it’s encouraging to see that at least one network is doing it right.
