Sleepycatz

Douche

I am working on a number of open posts, but this annoyed me enough to open a quick window.

Harry Fuller, an editor at Cnet News, published an insipid editorial today regarding Stephen Colbert’s integration of television and online content. Originally I was not a fan of the Stephan Colbert Report, but the show has grown on me with its biting satire and it’s openness to sharing content online. This show may not be Fuller’s cup o tea, but his editorial is so ill informed about both Internet content and the television show it’s hard to believe he works for Cnet, which has been the source for Internet news for years.

Lat night Colbert challenged his Internet savvy audience to modify a green screen video of himself with a mock lightsabre. Fuller inexplicably criticizes Colbert:

But can you find that video on the Colbert’s site ? Of course not, you have to go to YouTube to see the videos fans produced. You can find segments from recent shows but not this under-generated video. Colbert thinks he can use the Web to force people to watch his TV show? Not too swift.

Well the first problem is that Fuller did not apparently look at Colbert’s website, but at Comedy Central’s site - for a guy who’s suppose to be an Internet news editor, that’s pretty dumb.

Secondly, this Internet expert fails to understand that the Internet is about distributed content - there is no reason why Colbert would need to hold all the content on his servers. The idea that content should be centralized is antithetical to every concept of new media distribution online. By utilizing services like You-Tube, Colbert is prototyping the future of media distribution. Fuller is hopelessly stuck in the television and radio models in which all content is controlled by a single source. For that reason alone he should cease to opine his mis-begotten notions on an Internet news site.

This entry was posted by steve on Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.