R.I.P. Daily Show Discussions

There was a time when I'd see Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert give a stellar political commentary and decide to discuss it on my blog. All I had to do was type my commentary to begin a discussion, search YouTube for a clip, and cut and paste the embed code into my blog so that visitors could see what I was talking about. It was an excellent promotional tool for Comedy Central, too. Visitors who may have never seen the Daily Show might decide to start watching it after seeing that clip.

Alas Viacom, which owns Comedy Central and several other channels, doesn't see it that way. They make YouTube remove clips of its shows, and the clips featured on the official websites have no direct links to specific clips. Instead, you must go to the clips page and fish through several different clips to find the one you want. Not helpful. Not helpful at all.

Maybe someday Viacom, like NBC and several other stations, will wise up and figure out that YouTube is a valuable promotional tool. Should I dare to hope? In the meantime, I guess I can always post clips of Heroes to comment on (and promote).