SNL to miss YouTube

The New York Observer looks at how YouTube can help the mainstream media, and accordingly wonders why NBC has removed Saturday Night Live:

Perhaps no other network show has gotten more out of the free video-sharing Web site than Saturday Night Live. Indeed, at the very moment the long-running program seems to be emerging from a years-long slump, producing sketches—not just lip-synch bloopers—that people actually want to share, discuss, and watch again and again, YouTube has been there, doing more to re-establish the show’s cultural relevance than any honcho at NBC.

So why, one might ask, would NBC pull the plug?

Just as Saturday Night Live is earning back its credibility and fans, NBC has taken the videos down. NBC’s legal department, under the helm of Rick Cotton, patrols YouTube for unauthorized NBC content. Once found, the material is promptly removed. Consequently, the network is discouraging the very buzz that was firming up the show’s grip on the American zeitgeist ...

Media watchers dubbed the new unnamed Web venture the “YouTube killer.”

Read more here.