Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Every Daily Show episode since Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999? Disappeared. The historic remains of The Colbert Report? Disappeared. Presumably, one hopes, those materials remain archived internally somewhere, but for the general masses, they’re kaput. Instead, the links redirect visitors to Paramount+, a streaming service whose offerings pale in comparison. (The service offers recent seasons of the Daily Show to paying subscribers, but only a fraction of the prior archive.)
Such digital demolitions are becoming routine. For fans and scholars of pop culture, 2024 may go down as the year the internet shrank. Despite the immense archiving capabilities of the internet, we’re living through an age of mass deletion, a moment when entertainment and media corporations see themselves not as custodians of valuable cultural history, once freely available, but as ruthless maximisers of profit. Those of us who believe in the historical value of accessing media from the past are paying the price.
If you’re looking for a quick fix to watch the Drew Carey show, the whole series is free to watch on Plex right now. But who knows how long that will last
I’ll give it a look, thanks! Though I was really looking forward to having the entire collection safe on my own machine. :/
Yeah I feel that. There’s also ads in it and they don’t even follow some of the traditional ad breaks through the episodes
I’ve never used Plex before, that’s a huge turn off. Though tbf I’ve still not watched the episodes I already have, so I’m in no rush to put myself through that annoyance lol
It’s good to know they’re there though, for now anyway, and that at least someone has them and is making them available.