Friday, October 26, 2007

Daily Show Online Offline Outside U.S.

Comedy Central hit and miss with its revamped website for The Daily Show. The site now features a more extensive archive of earlier shows -- great.

But if you like your bacon to look like ham - sorry, you can't see the shows, as pointed out by the Globe and Mail. The Daily Show won't show the expanded content to viewers outside of the U.S. -- as in Canada.

Using geotargeting (tracking the PC's IP address) is supposed to create revenue opportunities and enhance the user experience by eliminating then need to type in a zip code. It is not to prevent people from accessing content. So one of two things happened -- since Viacom didn't sell advertising that reaches outside the U.S. to support the video, then it decided no revenue, no free watching. Or, perhaps the company's contract with the over the airways carrier up north prohibits streaming of content.

In either case, the company has to come up with a solution to protect its brand image. Or maybe Microsoft should just acquire Canada and make it all part of Washington.

Posted By John Gartner at 12:03 AM
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