Reuters has released a story verifiying what the blogosphere has been talking about for days: A “Viacom source” leaks the fact that Viacom fesses up to pulling Colbert Report clips:
Viacom asks YouTube to purge certain clips -source
By Kenneth Li
Reuters
Monday, October 30, 2006; 8:46 PMNEW YORK (Reuters) – Viacom Inc. (VIAb.N) has requested that video Web site YouTube take down some Viacom videos, including shows by comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, as part of ongoing discussions on how the two companies can work together, a Viacom source said on Monday.
It is not known which clips YouTube was asked to remove. But on Monday, thousands of Viacom clips of varying lengths of up to about 10 minutes each remained available on the top video-sharing service.
The source said Viacom, owner of the Comedy Central cable network, had sent a letter last Friday requesting that some of its shows — including the popular “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” “The Colbert Report” and those from MTV Networks and BET — be purged from the site.
Viacom and YouTube declined to comment on the matter.
…
Internet observers including Reifman noted the irony of pulling down clips from Stewart and Colbert. Bloggers note that Colbert joked that he deserved $700 million of the $1.65 billion in stock Google plans to pay for YouTube.
The video clip of that particular Colbert episode had been removed by the user, according to YouTube’s site.
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