Completely misunderstanding current culture, NBC, after forcing YouTube to remove several Saturday Night Live clips, has re-released on NBC.com the very same clips it said should not have been freely distributed. Explaining the twisted brilliance of the move, NBC VP of Interactive Stephen Andrade said, “We were concerned about building their corporation instead of ours since it’s our video. We would like to make it as easy for people to share as we can, so we’re trying to provide as many tools as we can to do that.” Gee, if we were NBC.com, we’d be more than happy for YouTube and everyone else to suffer the bandwidth and infrastructure costs to freely publicize our content.
Sadly, it’s about control – that archaic term old school companies cling to like a polygamist clings to his three wives. Limiting their content to a static, non-community like site isn’t going to gain the publicity or viewership that a YouTube release can achieve. The video section of NBC.com hilariously proclaims, “Now, instead of searching the web for ‘borrowed’ NBC highlights, you can go to the source! We’ve taken your viral favorites and gathered them into one convenient location. Watch. React. Tell a friend.” You’ve got to hand it to them for a bit of comic relief surrounding the situation.
