2007/10/19

New Ways to Access Comedy Central Content?

What's going on, here? We can't access ComedyCentral.com from Canada? Apparently, that same content is available on TheComedyNetwork.ca, thanks to a special agreement between CTV and Viacom. However, the two comedy television networks' sites work quite differently from one another. In fact, Comedy Network's media player seems to be having problems and I personally haven't been able to watch more than a few seconds of anything on that Canadian site. Worse yet, that site makes my computer (H3070 with 1GB of RAM, running XPSP2) while using IE7 and consistently crashes Flock 0.9.1. Pity.
Meanwhile, Viacom is offering all clips of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart since 1999. That content is now hosted, in a beta version, on TheDailyShow.com (that site is available in Canada). Unfortunately, some features of ComedyCentral's well-known "Motherload" player are absent from the new site's player. For instance, clips can only be viewed in a single format and there's no playlist feature. On the other hand, the new site does make it easy to rate, share, and comment clips, bringing the show closer to the YouTube crowd Viacom might want to woo.


Funny that TheDailyShow.com should use Google for search... ;-)

7 comments:

timlovelee said...

but now we can't even get to thedailyshow.com. Comedy Network blocks it! WTF, what a bunch of losers! Comedy Network, I hate your brand, your repetition, and your sorry shows, now this? Thank god CTV has TDS and TCR and I have my EyeTV.

Alexandre said...

Actually, it seems like I'm still able to access thedailyshow.com (and watch videos). Though it sounds unlikely, maybe they filter IPs by ISP or region? I'm on Bell Sympatico in Montreal.

blah said...

GAH! Now I can't access both! I can't access the ComedyCentral site nor thedailyshow site. Before, I could check out motherload and browse through the clips and waste hours going through the archived videos. Now, my only choice is comedynetwork.ca?? Their available media does not even compare to what thedailyshow site has. I am so bummed out. And the web proxies are not showing the videos. ARGH

Alexandre said...

blah,
For some reason, I can still access the TheDailyShow.com site. Given the way IP filters tend to work, I'm guessing that site is only blocked for certain Canadian ISPs or for certain regions. What seems more problematic is that there doesn't seem to be any explanation of what is going on.
Sad indeed.

blah said...

Weird. I used to have Bell Sympatico and every non-US web streaming site (i.e. innertube, etc) blocked me. I've switched now to a somewhat obscure DSL company, Teksavvy, and it still is blocked.

And I think the reason has to do with CRTC and their regulations for Canadian content.
Here's a related article but regarding CBS' Innertube: http://memles.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/jericho-q-a-oh-canada-why-canadians-cant-watch-innertube/

maatc said...

VideoSift wrote an open letter to Comedy Central and Viacom about this.
Please read and digg it here:
http://digg.com/business_finance/An_Open_Letter_to ...

Alexandre said...

Here's the complete Digg link:
http://digg.com/business_finance/An_Open_Letter_to_Comedy_Central_and_Viacom
The original "open letter" is on Videosift:
http://www.videosift.com/talk/An-Open-Letter-to-Comedy-Central-and-Viacom