Viacom's suing Google / YouTube for copyright infringement, and for $1 billion in damages. An act that should make some on the East Coast happy. Now, before i get to that, I want to explain just why Viacom's being stupid and will end of with egg on their face in this lawsuit.
First, Viacom should be suing the people who copy their programs and upload them to YouTube, if they want to go after anyone at all. There are 77 video-distribution companies like YouTube and any one of them can be a target for uploading Viacom's programming excerpts. Viacom's claim that YouTube has uploaded their material shows how little they understand about the market -- video makers were solely responsible for those uploads. YouTube was just a vessel, albeit a popular one.
Second, Viacom has not taken steps to "mark" the copyright of its programming in such a way as to discourage those who clip parts of the program. What Viacom fails to understand is that people don't upload the entire program, but a part they think is funny.
By contrast, Viacom has the entire program on its Comedy Channel site and forces one to wade through their entire episode just to get to a funny part. People aren't going to do that in huge numbers over time because of the fact that the clip does not indentify something newsworthy, like Stephen Colbert ranting about President Bush. Viacom doesn't understand the dynamics of the problem.
Third, Viacom's actually benefiting from YouTube uploads, as the ratings for the shows "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" have increased by seven percent over YouTube's life as the evidence in article two below shows. How can Viacom claim $1 billion in damages in the past, when it never had a YouTube-like system to begin with, let alone a business model? They can't.
That's why -- including the other reasons I gave -- Viacom will be embarassed in court. They're just trying to clear a path for the control of video based on its shows. But that very act of economic restriction shows just how stupid Viacom's lawsuit really is. It's better to have video clips out there with ads at the back of them. What Viacom should do is this: when people upload material on Google / YouTube, have YouTube set up a Revver-like ad system and split the ad revenue for those videos that feature Viacom material. In this way, the video clip is economized and Viacom makes money from it without restricting its distribution.
That's the best way. But absent that, Viacom's Old School approach is about to get clobbered. It's going to be fun to watch.
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Evidence One: Nielsen Ratings Count College Students:
The Nielsen ratings go to college
By Louise Story
Published: January 29, 2007
NEW YORK: For decades, Nielsen Media Research has affixed the same value to every student watching television while away at school: zero.
As a result, industry executives have complained for years that shows appealing to a younger audience have been underrated.
But, starting now, students on campuses count.
Shows like "America's Next Top Model" and "Family Guy" were expected to see their ratings surge this week as Nielsen Media Research, a unit of Nielsen Co., included the viewing habits of students living away from home in its surveys for the first time.
A jump in Nielsen ratings often means more advertiser spending, so the adjusted ratings are good news for networks with high student viewership like ESPN, Fox and CW.
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Adult Swim, a block of adult programming on the Cartoon Network that expects its 18-to-24-year-old audience to jump by 35 percent with the new ratings, is so excited about the change that it ran an ad telling viewers about it back in mid-October.
"It's going to validate what advertisers have always assumed, which is that college students are watching our programming," said Jeff Lucas, a senior vice president at Comedy Central. Lucas said that the network's own research showed that "South Park," "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report" have a large student audience.
It's too early to know how much more advertisers will pay for shows that show larger audiences because of the decision to count student viewers. Network executives, of course, said they expected to be paid for the higher ratings. And if advertisers decide to spend more on shows that are popular with students, television networks may decide to dedicate more of their programming to the young audience.
The student surveys are the first of two major changes in the way U.S. viewing habits are rated. In May, Nielsen will start releasing figures on the number of people who actually watch commercials, separating them from viewers who walk away or switch channels when the ads come on. The potential impact of ad ratings on network revenue has not been calculated.
Nielsen's move into university campuses is its first step in an ambitious plan to track television viewing wherever and whenever it takes place. Long focused only on viewing of home television sets, Nielsen is building portable meters to track when people are watching, and what, in bars, restaurants, gyms, stores and other places outside the home. And within two to three years, Nielsen plans to merge data from its online unit with its television unit to calculate total viewing on all media.
"The holy grail here is how to measure consumers as they go from TV to iPod to cellphone and back," said Alan Wurtzel, president of research for NBC Universal.
But the first step — measuring students' viewing of television — comes with its own pitfalls. Students watch a significant amount of television, spending three and a half hours a day tuned in on average, though that's about an hour less than the average for the overall population, according to Nielsen. And students are not watching only television. They are among the most likely consumers to be browsing the Internet, watching streaming video, text messaging on their cellphones and playing video games — sometimes all at once.
"College students have the television on in the background at the same time they undoubtedly have their computers on," said Matt Britton, chief of brand development for Mr. Youth, a marketing firm based in New York. "They're online — searching Facebook, doing research, shopping."
Their media habits make them targets for marketers, but the question of just how attentive they are while watching television may give advertisers pause.
"The people meter just measures if the set is on and what they're watching. But are they doing their homework, are they talking to friends; what else are they doing while the ad is showing?" said Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, an ad- buying agency.
Still, Adgate said, advertisers may increase their payments to networks with large student audiences because of the perceived lifetime value of that market. "If you can get them using your product at age 20, they could be using it for the next 60 years," he said.
Until now, the 18-to-24-year-olds counted by Nielsen were mainly those who did not attend school or attended part time or still lived at home. During holidays and summer breaks, of course, many students are home and have been counted by Nielsen at those times on their parents' set-top boxes. There are 10,000 households with Nielsen boxes tracking their viewing, and from those households, Nielsen extrapolates national viewing estimates.
Evidence Two - Both Viacom Shows Have Increased Ratings Turing YouTube
Less Snooze, More News
Viewers Turn Away From Leno and Letterman in Favor of News, Fake and Real
TV hosts Stephen Colbert, left, and Jon Stewart, winner of the award for Outstanding Directing for a Variety, Music, or Comedy Program for "The Daily Show," attend the Comedy Central Emmy party, Aug. 27, 2006, in Hollywood, Calif. (Bryan
By MARCUS BARAM
Dec. 6, 2006 — When Stephen Colbert was a guest on "Late Night with David Letterman" in October, he tweaked the show's host.
"We're on right now, we're opposite you right now," said Colbert, whose "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central airs at the same time as Letterman's show. "I'm actually telling my audience to watch me on this show."
Letterman responded, "I appreciate it. [We'll] take all the help we can get."
Maybe the longtime late-night host, who just signed a $35 million-a-year deal to stay on the air until 2010, was reading the tea leaves when it comes to his own ratings.
Letterman's audience, along with that of rival "Tonight Show with Jay Leno," has declined, as the Nielsen ratings for both shows slipped 6 percent compared with a year ago, according to Media Life trade magazine.
And Colbert has every reason to feel generous about his audience. The number of households watching "The Colbert Report" and John Stewart's "Daily Show," the news block of Comedy Central's late-night lineup, have increased almost 7 percent compared with a year ago, according to Nielsen.
And it's not just fake news that's attracting viewers. "Nightline," which is devoted to serious reportage, also added viewers, as ratings grew 4 percent compared with last year.
Overall, the audiences for the late-night legends still dwarf the news programs. At 4.4 million, Leno attracts almost four times as many viewers as Stewart.
But expect the current trends to continue. "You have a new generation of viewers looking for alternatives," says Marc Berman, senior editor at MediaWeek.
"Leno's been on for over a decade, and people are getting to a point where they're tired. It will continue to decline. The erosion for Leno and Letterman will continue since their audience is aging."
Current events are also driving more viewers to tune in to news, both fake and real. "It's an election year, and the war in Iraq is dominating headlines, so it's natural that you have people tuning in to news," says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
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