NPH Goes All On The Media

On The Media has become easily my favorite podcast. It's become a bit of a tradition for me to download the week's show on Sunday morning and listen to the first half of it on my way to church.

This week OTM had a piece about Youtube, the online video site that shot to the top 10 on the most viewed websites list. Youtube is changing the way we view media, putting old television content and all sorts of amateur-produced content online for worldwide viewership. Somewhat of a community forms around certain videos, like happened with SNL's "Lazy Sunday" short, which spawned countless replications by nameless hacks with camcorders.

But it's not all fun. Traditional media distributors, like major television networks, are ill at east with Youtube's ability to facilitate a viral spreading of media content. Especially their content. So NBC's lawyers smacked down Youtube for it's distribution of Lazy Sunday and made them remove it from their site.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine said on OTM that American media companies are doing everything in their power to hold on to their grip on media content distribution, while European network execs are taking more of a "the-old-world-is-gone" stance and looking for ways to capitalize on the internet's media distribution capabilities. But however our traditional media distributors react to things like Youtube, it can hardly be argued that it's the best example of how the internet is changing how people relate to media. I mean, before Youtube, could millions of watch what was originally a street performance for a handful of passers-by?

This skeleton dances like Jeff Bryan.