C-Span Makes Mockery of its Mission

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C-Span Makes Mockery of its Mission

I just spent 25 minutes watching Stephen Colbert's roast of President Bush, his administration, other washington insiders, and the press corps.

If you've got 25 minutes, you can watch it too. But you really only need to watch the first 10-15 minutes. I thought the last 10 was kind of weak.

The link above is to Google video.

But the video and microchunks of it were up at iFilm and YouTube for several days right after Colbert's talk. Check out Mark Pincus' blog post on the videos. He has links to two YouTube videos of Collbert's speech and they return the now infamous:

Damn. Broken links. That is so uncool. When you link to something, you want it to be there forever. They call them permalinks for a reason.

Now people are going to say, "well C-Span owns that content and they can dictate where they want it to be and where they don't want it to be". I guess so.

But I went to C-Span's website and found this statement of mission:

C-SPAN is a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming.

If their mission is really to "provide public access to the political process", then they have committed a huge mistake. Because YouTube in particular allows their users to grab the content and rebroadcast it via their blogs and social network pages. That's providing access.

Putting it up on Google with restrictions on re-use is not.

I officially now hate C-Span. I am with Chartreuse. Screw them.

C-Span is not the solution to public access. They are part of the problem.

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Tracked on May 11, 2006 7:30:45 AM

Posted May 10, 2006 in Politics , Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

"I officially now hate C-Span. I am with Chartreuse. Screw them."

Context: Iraq, gas prices, nuclear Iran, Kim Jong-il, George Bush, education in america...

I know a little hyperbole does wonders in the blogosphere, and you have plenty of competition, but perhaps this is just a touch strong over an arguable business decision ;)

Respectfully,
Hank

Posted by: Hank Williams | May 10, 2006 8:54:45 AM

i didn't write that word to get attention or traffic Hank.

it was me telling you how i felt at that moment in time.

and i still feel that way.

Posted by: fred | May 10, 2006 9:03:18 AM

Free Colbert!

This comment really has nothing to do with C-SPAN...

My first ever blog post was about Colbert after hearing him doing a Mr. Goodwrench commercial on the radio. I had the great pleasure to work and travel with him for a couple of years and he's one of the greats. It's amazing to see people clamoring to watch him roast Bush... I couldn't be more proud.

Free Colbert!

Posted by: Chrispy | May 10, 2006 11:10:14 AM

I just don't see how these guys just don't see the obvious benefit to them when stuff like that goes viral.

Particularly, as you point out, when it furthers their mission.

You can't buy that kind of action from the best PR teams in the world, and here they are shutting the thing down.

I mean, how many viewers were watching C-SPAN for the first time because of this? How many folks read the name C-SPAN for the first time? etc.

Ah, just as youth is wasted on the young...

Posted by: Robert Bruce | May 10, 2006 11:19:13 AM

I'd prefer you reach out to someone there through your contacts and give them reasonable feedback from someone who is 7 years ahead of their thinking, and help influence change for the public good. It doesn't make me so warm and fuzzy that the way we get to the right result for public access and microchunking is by saying "screw them", but maybe I'm just getting old enough to sound like my mother.

Posted by: Dorrian | May 10, 2006 11:35:25 AM

"i didn't write that word to get attention or traffic Hank."

Perhaps my comment was slightly cynical. I certainly believe that you are sincere in that this stuff really gets under your skin and that you just wrote what you felt. I guess I am just getting to the point where, while I am incredibly passionate about what I do, that these kinds of things just don't effect me that way (perhaps its just listening to too much Sade recently). But perhaps it is also a testament to the passion that you bring to your work that such a thing could trigger such a strong reacton.

Hank

Posted by: Hank Williams | May 10, 2006 1:20:59 PM

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