Comedy Central Website Shuttered, Decades of Daily Show and Colbert Report Clips Gone in a Blink
And now for your moment of the-opposite-of-zen…
Paramount has effectively shut down its Comedy Central website, TVLine has confirmed. Prior to this week, ComedyCentral.com had been home to a repository of clips that included video from every episode of The Daily Show since 1999 and all of The Colbert Report.
Also included in the purge: snippets from and episodes of @midnight, The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore and The Opposition With Jordan Klepper.
Latenighter.com first reported the site’s gutting. TVLine has reached out to Paramount for comment.
The site’s shutdown follows that of two other Paramount-owned properties: MTV.com (including its in-depth MTV News archives), TVLand.com and CMT.com. While all of the domains remain active, a pop-up notice on each homepage lets readers know that “while most episodes of [insert channel here] series are no longer available on this website, you can watch [insert channel here] through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of [insert channel here] shows.”
Much of the content housed on the now-dark sites, however, is not currently available on Paramount+.
Were you a frequent visitor to any of the sites listed above? Hit the comments and let us know!
One should reach out directly to Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart reps for comment about this. What do they think? Will they address it on their shows? Either add it to Paramount Plus (like SNL on Peacock) or at least upload these officially to YouTube for ad revenue!
I don’t think it will ever be on YouTube but I could be wrong. Obviously they want to up the paying subscribers on paramount+ especially since they’re about to do a price increase. With all the failed merger/buyout attempts, I’m guessing they want to generate some cash. Hopefully everything will be added to the platform soon but not holding my breathe.
Well never say never…I know this isn’t exactly the same but Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell have recently uploaded full episodes and full clips from their shows dating back to season 1 for both shows on YouTube. So maybe they could do something like this…But I do say that putting them all on Paramount+ and making money off of them makes sense.
Wonder if they’re doing what HBO have done with Last Week Tonight and dumping it on youtube? Saves them a fortune in hosting and bandwidth costs. Already seen some archive clips re-appear on youtube, like the Trump eating pizza with a knife and fork rant.
It’s getting weird now. Why is Viacom so desperate to get rid of so much history without attempting to archive it somehow?
That really sucks. Corporate greed and ignorance of history. MTV, cmt, vh1, daily show. All gone? That was my life growing up into adulthood. Sad sad day. Gonna drop paramount now. Don’t watch it enough to warrant putting money in there pockets to finance their greed and irresponsibility.
i don’t like it either but if they are bought by another company they would just do the same thing sadly
Just goes to show you that these mega-companies don’t care about their own History.
Exactly.
It’s as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced; I fear something terrible has happened.
Sounds like an strategy to force viewers to subcribes and pay for a lot more of Paramount related content and you can be charged rather than watching it from their YouTube channel. They want profit aka they’re feeling greedy.
Comedy Central’s website is cc.com.
Pure greed of the entertainment industry on full display!!
This is difficult because on the one hand thos content should be preserved somewhere for posterity. But on the other hand, who exactly is going back and reading 20 year old MTV News articles or watching a Daily Show episode from 2006? Probably not many people – and it’s likely costing Paramount millions of dollars to host all of that data.
While I see your point @John Doe, what made me angry was I don’t have cable bacause it is so expensive, and the only thing I watch on cable is The Daily Show. So each day I would go to Comedy Central’s website, sit through a bunch of ads that I couldn’t fast-forward through, and get my *current* Daily Show fix. So even though they made money off of their ads playing during the online Daily Show, I can no longer watch it. Cheap jerks!
Millions to host the data? Hardly. Storage and redundancy cost is trivial, the only ongoing expense would be bandwidth, and if you claim nobody is watching anyway, what bandwidth?
Not surprised.
CC app killed off back in Jan/Feb.
CC.com has had a popup warning all month, warning of the pending pulling of all episodes.
And TVLand.com had a popup warning beginning end of May, saying full episodes (i.e. Younger) gone June 17.
Does not matter if you pay for cable/satellite television, you must pay $$$ for Paramount+ to STREAM any episodes from the mentioned channels!
Anyone want to wager how long till CBS.com does away with their FREE streaming episodes (usually only queue of last 5)?
**Note: both Younger AND The Daily Show are visible (& streaming) on Paramount+ website.
correction: The Daily Show is only the last 2 seasons, while Younger is all 7 seasons (streaming on Paramount+).
And don’t get me started about Comedy Central not televising the entire guest interview, such that 9 times out of 10 you would have to go to CC.com to watch the EXTENDED interview for Daily Show’s guest(s).
This greed greed and more money grubbing greed is why people are going to pirate websites that have all those episodes to watch and download
Yes, this will only encourage piracy.
WTF! Is this a Republican move?
Literally the opposite. Erasing and rewriting history is a lib move.
What is going on with Paramount? Color me chartreuse if you will, but after looking at a TV show playbill on Roku, for me it was “gee, they are trying to kill free, quality TV with their subscription-required fees”. To me, it is buying out quality TV series. We are left with replays, oldies, some sports, several game shows, news media programs and lots of commercials. TV Fall line-ups… what’s that?
that website was horrible to use. if all the episodes would end up on p+ i wouldn’t mind, but i doubt that will happen. too much content that doesn’t fit today’s standard.
I really would like to see John Oliver’s stint as host on daily show again though.
A sad story, can’t believe that this has happened. Hopefully this will be picked up by another source. Sounds like another screw that is tightening here in America where some are controlling every aspect of life. Reminds me of WWII when Hitler did the exact thing, little by little until we the people become totally controlled. What say yea? Has corruption gotten into the Paramount Co and now controls them from broadcasting what people want to hear? As Paul Harvey concluded each radio broadcast…and that’s the real story… Say yea, what is this REAL story/truth?
Wait, are you comparing a few tv shows being removed from a free website to the actual third Reich?
Glad this was posted. I was wondering what happened to the boys. Someone couldn’t handle the comedy!!!!
Next on the chopping block, the CBS News Archives. “It’s the anniversary of the first moon landing, and here’s Nora to TELL you all about it.”
I love Comedy Centrol in general, The Daily Show especially. I’m unable to pay for another format (Paramont+ for example) so I’ll just be out from that show. What a bummer!
They’re trying to save Paramount+ by giving it more reruns. We used to watch those shows free with some commercial breaks which allowed time to refill on beer and snacks. Now to watch the same old shows we’ve already seen, we are expected to pay a monthly fee PLUS endure commercial breaks which can’t be fast-forwarded. Oh yeah, and a lot of old Star Trek movies. Y’all think that’s a smart way to spend your money?
I’d been looking for a way to watch John Stewart host the Daily Show on Mondays and found that Paramount + had Comedy Central. Literally, last week. I was already a subscriber so Yippe! Then this happens! Deleted? WTF.
Is this a Republican tactic to protect Trump?
This is wrong on ever level. To delete decades worth of TV history. There should be a law protecting this stuff.
Jon Stuart, Jordan Klepper, et Al were best tv ever. Did Trump buy Comedy Central to silence them?
Boo Hiss
I used to go back to early 00s daily show and laugh at Colbert, Ed Helms, Samantha Bee etc. they were fun times for comedy. I will miss this site and the nostalgia!