Daily Show Archive Opens

I got quite a few private e-mails either agreeing or taking me to task about a comment I made back in September about VOA and the Daily Show (which we see in Europe on the web or in an edited form at rather odd hours on CNN International).

Now it seems Comedy Central has opened up the entire archive of the Daily Show on line for gratis, using either a time line (if you remember the show date) or a tag search. The NY Times media blog reports that 13,000 videos have gone on line with the spinoff show "The Colbert Report" due to go up soon. Still maintain more English speakers outside the US get a clearer understanding of US politics by watching the comedy than hearing the news from US government networks. It is funny, memorable - and now much easier to access.

The only other thing they need to do is to put the collection in context with today. Compare today's show with a year ago, 5 years ago, or here's all the shows about a specific theme. Yes, that is possible as a "pull" search. But archives get used more if certain collections are also "pushed" to the public.