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.
At least they still exist somewhere, albeit hidden. In the early days of television, the BBC routinely taped over episodes, even of really popular shows, because the tapes were expensive.
Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_missing_episodes
Every now and then a box of old VHS recordings turns up in someone’s shed or attic, and can be added back in to the archive. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-67218634
In the modern age, we all need to be our own archivists, saving whatever we can from a perpetually burning Library of Alexandria. This is why pirates are a community, each one saves a little bit of history that matters to them, and then we share.
Every episode of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is on the Internet Archive. Every episode of South Park is on public trackers.
Are the normies okay?
Not sure we can rely on internet archive for long.
Based on what is being shared on Facebook? No. No they are not
I remember being laughed at when I admitted I still buy CDs, DVDs, or BluRays a few years ago.
Yep.
I rip them, then store the discs in a cool, dark, dry place.
Everything I rip is backed up. It’s pretty clear what’s happening.
And in 20 years they’ll start “selling” everything by the episode online.
I’m starting to get the data hoarding crowd more and more. We have been taught this dream of “the internet never forgets” but people missed to mention that it’s on the average Janes and Joes to make sure that is the case. Corporations want the internet to forget because it’s better for business.
I’ve become the same. I’m now that person seeking out more obscure and underrated gems from anywhere in the 30s through the 90s. I hate the thought of all this cultural collateral damage disappearing forever.
The internet certainly forgets…but a Usenet service with good retention will remember for about a decade
Never heard it put better
GenX tv addict here. I grew up in a time when, if you wanted to watch a show, you need to make an effort to be in front of the tv when it aired. If you missed seeing it, you had to hope that if was repeated over the summer (only about 2/3’s the episodes of a continuing series would be repeated, and if a show was cancelled, that was it). If you missed it on summer repeats, you’d have to hold the show went into syndication, was carried locally at a time you were able to watch it, and then stalk the series because syndication packages were notoriously shown out of order (which is why almost all the episodes ended up with the characters being in the same base situation as they started out in).
It was the same thing if there was an episode or series you loved and wanted to watch again.
VCRs were an absolute game changer. You didn’t have to revolve your life around a tv schedule- you could go out, to go events, go shopping, have a late dinner. You could pause tv to go to the bathroom, you could watch and re-watch episodes that you enjoyed, or verify something you thought had happened earlier instead of relying on collective memory. If you missed taping something, you might still have to wait for re-runs - but there was also the chance that someone else had taped it and could loan you the tape.
Having learned the lessons of broadcast tv, I taped everything I watched, and I kept the tapes of the stuff I liked, or that had actors I liked. I could sit down today and watch all the episodes of David Soul in Casablanca or Billy Campbell in Moon Over Miami, or short-lived shows like Space Rangers or South of Sunset.
I still record and save things locally. The myth of having immediate access to everything ever produced was always just a myth.
TV Guide and a fresh pack of 5 VHS tapes. My parents knew exactly what to get me for my birthday.
Oh, access to everything will happen.
The owners will just charge us for every viewing of every episode.
access to everything that isn’t bogged down by stupid licensing deals, too. so many things just disappear because someone wants someone else to keep paying for that one song they added in a single episode 15 years ago.
The “internet never forgets” was always bullshit. Just a catch phrase from ppl who don’t understand how it works. It costs money to keep a server serving. Maintenance, support, upgrades, electricity, internet, etc.
Things are removed or lost on the internet all the time. The things you want to go away linger and the things you want to keep are fleeting. You don’t get to choose unless you’re paying. And those that are paying aren’t keeping what you want them to.
Afaik, the phrase is supposed to mean “don’t count on the internet forgetting something you want purged.”
Yeah, I believe that began as a sort of Streisand effect-esque phrase, where if you want the internet to forget, it won’t, but of course other things that most people are not paying any mind to will disappear
Data hoarders/pirates are the reason “internet never forgets”. Who do you think retains those obscure pics/memes/videos?
No, what they really mean is that the internet will not forget the shit that don’t matter. We’re talking how obsessed people have gotten with Chris-Chan. All the while this shit is happening.
We don’t give a fuck about how little of a life you live, where you orbit around shitty online people who do shitty things. We are losing stuff like this and getting fucked over all the while.
So I was going to say thanks for the reminder to go check if more episodes of the Drew Carey Show had been uploaded to archive.org since the last time I checked, only to find that those that were already on there (first 2 or 3 seasons I think?) are now all gone (apart from the Improv-A-Ganza episodes, which I will be downloading before they disappear too). Nowhere is safe.
Drew Carey is damn near lost media. I can’t believe how one of the most popular shows of the 90s and early 00s is basically impossible to watch.
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.
