‘Daily Show’ Alumni Mourn Loss of Clip Archive After Website Scrubbing

A company resolution to wash Comedy Central‘s web site of a lot of its content material isn’t sitting properly with numerous former and present Day by day Present staffers.

The websites for Comedy Central and fellow Paramount-owned cable channels CMT, Paramount Community and TV Land, had been largely stripped of content material this week; what’s left principally redirects customers to the corporate’s streaming platform, Paramount+. The media conglomerate additionally shut down the MTV Information web site earlier this week.

Paramount, which is trying to reduce half a billion {dollars} in prices amid declining earnings, mentioned the gutting of the websites was “a part of broader web site adjustments throughout” the corporate.

“We’ve got launched extra streamlined variations of our websites, driving followers to Paramount+ to observe their favourite exhibits,” the corporate mentioned in a press release.

Paramount+, nevertheless, solely has the 2 most up-to-date seasons of The Day by day Present obtainable for streaming. Comedy Central’s web site beforehand hosted an enormous archive of episodes and clips protecting many of the present’s historical past (together with fellow late night time exhibits @midnight, The Colbert Report, The Nightly Present and The Opposition With Jordan Klepper). That archive is now gone. Some materials is on YouTube, however The Day by day Present’s channel there, as an example, doesn’t have any materials from earlier than 2016.

“Gotta convey again the bootleg DVD man,” former Day by day Present correspondent Roy Wooden Jr. wrote on X. This shit ain’t proper.” Doug Herzog, who headed Comedy Central when The Day by day Present launched, reposted Wooden’s assertion in an Instagram Story and added a facepalm emoji to a screenshot of a information merchandise about Paramount’s gutting of the web site.

On social community Bluesky, Day by day Present author and producer Daniel Radosh famous that the present’s workers would commonly use the clip archive on the web site: “Hey for additional enjoyable guess what was the one manner for individuals who nonetheless work on the present to seek out previous clips which are necessary to have in the midst of producing mentioned present!” he wrote.

Tim Carvell, an govt producer of Final Week Tonight With John Oliver and 10-year Day by day Present veteran, took a shot at Paramount in a Bluesky submit: “2002: ‘Cautious, youngsters, the Web is eternally!’ 2024: ‘Oh, hey, all of the work you probably did for a decade of your life was simply deleted from the Web for Enterprise Causes.’”