South Park to be available online legally

I saw this item at Slashdot.

thefickler writes “MTV Networks, the biggest division of Viacom Inc., has announced plans to make every South Park episode available online for free as part of a plan to make the show available to a larger audience.” This is apparently largely because of the success of a similar project where they put every episode of The Daily Show on-line a few months back. This action didn’t hurt ratings, and it may have actually helped them.

At the moment, this seems like a no-brainer. For the most part, computer video is still no substitute for television viewing. Someday it will be, however. And the content owners probably need to figure out how to get a handle on it and make money off of their content once folks are just as happy watching the stuff online as over cable or broadcast. In particular, The Daily Show is probably a good test bed. The nature of how Daily Show content is used changes as it ages, I think. It’s great television entertainment when it’s new, and it’s great for bloggers and the like to use to make political points even as it ages. And, the two kinds of uses don’t really compete. I can’t imagine too many viewers taking a pass on watching The Daily Show on television because a blogger posted a segment somewhere. To the contrary, I can definitely see someone who otherwise hadn’t been watching taking note of how good the show is and becoming a viewer.

There are other concerns besides pure viewership, I suppose. Losing control of one’s content can have unexpected consequences. But, frankly, I think that control of one’s content is becoming ever more elusive.