Say it ain’t so! Comedy Central’s popular faux-news programs “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” have stopped streaming full episodes online because of an ongoing battle between Viacom and DirecTV. The satellite provider dropped all of Viacom’s 26 channels — Comedy Central among them — from its lineup Tuesday evening because it’s reluctant to pay the company’s fees.
“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” will continue to be available on all other service providers. However, fans who watch the show online will be able to access only clips of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central’s website until the dispute is settled.
Like this week wasn’t bad enough for fans, what with Stewart and Colbert both being on hiatus.
— Posted by Tracy Bloom
The Huffington Post:
DirecTV has noted to customers that although they are losing Comedy Central on DirecTV, anyone can easily watch popular shows like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” on the Internet, where videos found on official Comedy Central websites are embeddable so they can be played on other sites (such as The Huffington Post).
But Viacom continued to play hardball. As of Thursday, full episodes of the shows have been removed from the official “Daily Show” and “Colbert Report” websites, although individual clips of the episodes are still available.
The move is likely to upset viewers who do not subscribe to DirecTV, but who will still be unable to watch full episodes of their favorite shows due to the two corporations’ feud. Presumably, the suspension will not be permanent, and episodes will resume streaming online when DirecTV and Viacom reach an agreement to reinstate Viacom programming.
Tracy Bloom
