The sheer unadulterated joy of South Park:
There is a lot up in the air with this sort of thing. Hulu is looking like it did things right by getting content and building an advertising system around it. That is just one person’s opinion, but it seems obvious to me that building advertising abilities into content systems on the internet is necessary for the content development. Conversely, Youtube can’t seem to make money, despite all of the traffic it garners.
These content providers need to be able to generate revenue. People who use the internet have a misguided sense of entitlement to content, including television shows, movies, music and all kinds of other things. Now I’m not advocating that we should have to pay for the content individually, but a system for monetizing content is necessary for producers.
Hell, even those South Park episodes have advertising at the start of them.
But there is a flip side to the coin. Many artists and content producers are giving away that product as a means to market themselves. Authors, musicians, film producers and the like are all giving away their products on the internet. Where’s the value? Well for musicians, building a fan base of a truly dedicated 10,000 is probably enough to make a good living. And finding the people to populate that number is the hard part. So giving away the music to those who want to hear it can work. Works the same for authors, although it’s much more difficult (last I checked no one reads any more). But does this idea work for video? Maybe for the actors/actresses in the video, but I’m yet to see producers really do well. I’m near positive there are many examples that prove me wrong; but my general thinking is that it won’t scale with video.
Giving away video (although awesome for me) won’t provide the best content in the long run. And so it may be a problem. We will need to monetize internet video, but how? I have no idea. I don’t want to pay for it, though an advertising situation isn’t something I’m completely opposed to. Luckily, as of yet, this isn’t my problem.
Redmarketer 
I think you’re right that giving away video is just a way to market themselves/possibly generate more people to their website or station. This is like the “parents’ giving their underage kids booze” approach. They’re going to get it somewhere; wouldn’t you rather have them be safe drinking it at home? Because the kids these days are going to get video anyways whether you like it or not. Might as well make it on your site, surrounded by your advertisers. So I guess this is the best solution until they come up with something else.
Comment by postadvertina/sleeping in my party dress — June 30, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
Interesting simile :-)
Logical conclusion as well. Only time will tell how this all turns out. Thanks for your thoughts Andrea.
Comment by Robert John Ed — June 30, 2008 @ 8:08 pm
Well, I’m guess Comedy Central would prefer us watching “South Park” on their website as opposed to those like http://www.allsp.com/ right? It doesn’t much matter for me, of course. My DVR is choked full of SP episodes. :)
Comment by postadvertina/sleeping in my party dress — June 30, 2008 @ 8:49 pm