Eat The Press

"This Is Natalie Morales, Reporting From Uranus!"

Huffington Post |  Rachel Sklar |  Posted Tuesday December 12, 2006 at 03:42 PM

Clips like this are why YouTube was created:

No, seriously: Clips like this are why YouTube was created. According to YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim,* he was inspired to start YouTube after reading about how the clip of Jon Stewart on Crossfire clip Wired flew around the internet in an article in Wired. The piece, "The Bittorrent Effect" by Clive Thompson, who described how the clip reached approximately 2.5 million people, three times as many as the regular CNN viewing audience. Wrote Thompson, then: "The whole concept of must-see TV changes from being something you stop and watch every Thursday to something you gotta check out right now, dude. Just click here."

Karim said that when he read that, it hit him: "Now to get the biggest audience, maybe online is the way to go, and not television." In identifying that "clip culture" he identified a need, and a market. From there, YouTube was born. (These comments, by the way, are from a talk Karim gave earlier this fall, posted on YouTube, natch; he talks about this starting at 26:16 and charts YouTube's growth with an almost-vertical line graph at 7:38).

Less than two years later, "clip culture" is in full force, and "must-see TV" includes big TV moments like the Crossfire confrontation, Nipplegate and the Zidane head-butt but also gotta-see-it-to-believe-it moments like Connie Chung slinking over a piano (or George Allen making macaca, or Michael Richards at the Laugh Factory), as well as day-to-day clips from The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Fox News, talk shows and wherever else TV "moments" may be found. This, of course, includes bloopers, like Natalie Morales using a rather unfortunate pronunciation of the word "annals" above or Jane Skinner saying "cock" on FoxNews (twice). Goofy and mostly harmless, but funny nonetheless — and worth sharing.

*The not-Steve Chen or Chad Hurley one who opted out of the company to go to grad school.