The Daily Show Online

October 18, 2007 6:20 PM

The Daily Show online. Over 13,000 segments going back to 1999. [CNET story]

The site has some bugs right now (poor searching, for example). But still, it's a treasure trove.

posted by McLir (81 comments total)

Another bug is that when I tried to register earlier for the community features, it would continually claim I hadn't entered a birthdate and username. And I did!
posted by JHarris at 6:22 PM on October 18, 2007

And, to get the inevitable link trading underway, John Hodgman explaining how the internet is not like a series of tubes.
posted by JHarris at 6:25 PM on October 18, 2007

I'm trying to find the clip where Jon decided that satire was dead and they should just pass control over to the Schmaley Show.
posted by spiderwire at 6:29 PM on October 18, 2007

Salon's Machinist writeup
posted by kirkaracha at 6:29 PM on October 18, 2007

Aw, no Kilborn era.

(Not that I like Kilborn, I emphatically don't, but I would love to see some early stuff to compare then to now, as I avoided the show when he was on.)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:32 PM on October 18, 2007

Los Angeles Times writeup
posted by kirkaracha at 6:33 PM on October 18, 2007

Do you hear that? That's the sound of BitTorrent's stock crashing. I don't understand why the old distribution models can't get with the times.
posted by dhartung at 6:33 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Man, Kilborn... wow... I liked the Late Late Show, but his Daily Show stint was painful to watch! I would like to see it again, too, to see if maybe it was just me. Was it?
posted by The Deej at 6:34 PM on October 18, 2007

Actually, it's been online for a while, at least new episodes. The problem was they were on Comedy Central's "Motherload" site which is a usability nightmare. Seriously.
posted by delmoi at 6:35 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Second on the Kilborn stuff. Actually I remember him not being that bad, but Jon Stewart just blew him so completely out of the water by actually treating their fake news with some degree of respect, all while the real news was not being treated that way at all.

Remember, when Kilborn went to live in the Big Network House, it was on the strength of his Daily Show performances. Is it any wonder that, when it was revealed that NBC has been courting Stewart about jumping ship, that he told them no?
posted by JHarris at 6:36 PM on October 18, 2007

By the way, just a note from looking over the archives... the only Daily Show segment to survive pretty much unchanged from the Kilborn years is Back In Black, whose niche (ranting about the news) seems a bit less exclusive these days, but at least he's still around.
posted by JHarris at 6:40 PM on October 18, 2007

"poor searching" is one hell of an understatement.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:42 PM on October 18, 2007

Anthrax
Irony is Dead
The Shmaily Shmow
posted by McLir at 6:43 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

"The Administration is making my job obsolete"
posted by spiderwire at 6:44 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

Dude, the hell with search, it actually works. Like Delmoi said - bad UI and bad format choices (seriously, who the hell uses WMV anymore?). So now there's a better way to watch last night's episodes.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 6:49 PM on October 18, 2007

This is totally rad, and will only become radder as its search features are enhanced.

It'd be great if they tagged things, or allowed certain users to do so. As is, "homometer" turned up no hits.

"Top Searches: Jon Stewart, Indecision, This Week in God, John McCain, George Bush"

Really? "Jon Stewart" is the top search? How about "cancel jon stewart"?
posted by ibmcginty at 6:52 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

When the Kilborn version began, it was pretty good. But when Lizz Winstead left the show, it looked like it had jumped the shark. Without Lizz, the show lost its moral compass and the show degraded into frat-boy jokes. (Half the humor was show the folly of foreigners not speaking English. Yuk Yuk.)

Jon Stewart may just save our republic.
posted by McLir at 6:52 PM on October 18, 2007

A Hastily Thrown Together Editorial - Change
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 6:56 PM on October 18, 2007

Wow. Baby-faced Jon in a cheap suit that's too big for him.
posted by maudlin at 7:02 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

I wonder if they are planning on putting the Kilborn items online down the road, or not. Seems an odd decision to exclude them.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:03 PM on October 18, 2007

This is like stop-motion video on my Mac. Damn you Flash!
posted by smackfu at 7:07 PM on October 18, 2007

seriously, who the hell uses WMV anymore?

Uhh, it's not WMV, it's in Flash.
posted by dhammond at 7:13 PM on October 18, 2007

I can't tell, are the videos sponsored by Hyundai?
posted by starman at 7:14 PM on October 18, 2007

yes my computer is old and stupid and flash keeps stuttering. Any hints?
posted by jourman2 at 7:20 PM on October 18, 2007

MOAR LINK TRADINK PLZ
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 7:24 PM on October 18, 2007

Is it loading really, really slowly for anyone else but me?
posted by Kattullus at 7:27 PM on October 18, 2007

There were no openings for a man in a fetal position under his desk, so Jon Stewart had to go back to work.
posted by absalom at 7:27 PM on October 18, 2007 [4 favorites]

The site killed Safari but loaded fine in Firefox. That might be the problem for others.
posted by spiderwire at 7:29 PM on October 18, 2007

I simply get a perpetual "Loading..." like I do on practically every streaming media site these days. YouTube seems to be the only one that ever works. I hate all technology.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 7:30 PM on October 18, 2007

working fine on Safari/Mac for me...
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:32 PM on October 18, 2007

Stephen Colbert breaks character and loses his shit.
posted by peep at 7:42 PM on October 18, 2007 [23 favorites]

[never never never use safari for any purpose ever]
posted by damehex at 7:48 PM on October 18, 2007

Christopher Hitchens on 04/30/2007 and 11/30/2004
posted by wfrgms at 7:49 PM on October 18, 2007

I remember watching Daily Show the first night, and then throughout the first weeks. Kilborn, I thought, was amazing. Maybe it was just my age (I was home that summer from college) and the taste I'd cultivated at that age matching up with the dryest, snidest, meanest show I'd ever seen. It was really a perfect absurdly fucked imitation of a nightly news show. Then they brought the audience in and there were laughs after every joke and I thought Kilborn's timing was ruined by it. Just aiming it right into the camera, never smiling, his timing had been sublime. I kept watching until Winstead left, after which the writing took a very sharp downturn.

Jon, of course, after hitting his stride a month or two into his stint, has been putting on the greatest politics show in history.
posted by damehex at 7:55 PM on October 18, 2007 [3 favorites]

For the love of god, can anyone help me find the Samantha Bee piece on the 2000 party conventions?

And then, for the love of god, will you all please watch it?
posted by foxy_hedgehog at 8:09 PM on October 18, 2007

I didn't know about this so thanks for posting.
posted by nola at 8:10 PM on October 18, 2007

There are four clips tagged with "Even Stevphen" and only one tagged with "Even Stephven."
posted by yarrow at 8:11 PM on October 18, 2007

I liked Kilborn at the beginning too. I miss 'T-hers-day... for the ladies.'
posted by solipsophistocracy at 8:14 PM on October 18, 2007

Wow, absalom, thanks for that.
posted by Phire at 8:20 PM on October 18, 2007

Find these anywhere and I will give you a prize:

Rob Cordrry breaking the "curse of the bambino"
Stephen Colbert (?) on the Weather Channel in sweeps week

The Beth Littleford interview with Jesse Ventura is really one of the peaks in the show's existence.

also. damehex = spot on.
posted by pokermonk at 8:21 PM on October 18, 2007

Seconding the Kilborn fans. The show didn't really become brilliant until sometime after Jon Stewart came aboard, but I was pretty much a fan of the show from day one. In fact, I assumed that the show would wither away once he left. How wrong I was.
posted by dhammond at 8:24 PM on October 18, 2007

Wow, absalom, thanks for that.

Yeah, thanks absalom... the 9-11 clip you linked to was wrenching to watch, but worth it.
posted by wfrgms at 8:30 PM on October 18, 2007

Yea! Thanks for the post! Viacom has actually just started blocking Canadian IPs from seeing the Comedy Central site. Just moments ago, I was rejecting the option of downloading some microshaft sliverlite to watch the daily show on the weird canadian comedy site to which I was redirected when attempting to go to comedycentral.com
posted by tingting at 8:33 PM on October 18, 2007

Man, this is friggin' awesome.
posted by delmoi at 8:40 PM on October 18, 2007

I'm going to snark just becuase having so much Daily Show online is such a good thing it doesn't need to be expanded apon ('specially as we don't get it in AU) but...

The 'wayback randomizer' isn't random at all, I keep gettnig the same "Giant Head of Ted Koppel" followed by "Brutus the Buckeye" followed by...

I don't mind ads, that's how you pay for stuff, fine, good, but why does it have to be /the/ same ad everytime? Hyundai is a fine car, got it. What else should I buy?

Snark over.. back to the goodness.

I was going to say "back to the funny" but then I watched absalom's link of Jon after 9/11 which is very touching and good on an entirely different level. I wonder what he thinks now about his feelings of hope and optimism expressed then.
posted by adamt at 8:49 PM on October 18, 2007

I never saw Killborn on the daily show, but I did see his CBS or whatever show. I thought it sucked.
posted by delmoi at 8:50 PM on October 18, 2007

Oh, and is this were I mention that the second episode I ever saw of The Daily Show (in 2002... give me a break, I'm foreign... it's hard to steal cable from across the Atlantic) was as an audience member. I got a rubber globe on an elastic string that kept me company for years. That thing was a blast to toss around.
posted by Kattullus at 8:50 PM on October 18, 2007

Thanks! You are now responsible for my cranky sleep deprived attitude tomorrow morning. Still, I thank you for this post.
posted by not_on_display at 8:57 PM on October 18, 2007

One interesting segment was this show the day after the VTech shooting. He didn't mention it. I remember feeling like I didn't really want to see any jokes about the situation, because what kind of joke could you make about it?

I thought it was interesting. I remember Stewart also talked about how, since it's not a real news story, he doesn't have to cover stories if, you know, they really just suck.
posted by delmoi at 9:05 PM on October 18, 2007

thankgoodness they attached "beta" to the header
posted by parhamr at 9:08 PM on October 18, 2007

Viacom has actually just started blocking Canadian IPs from seeing the Comedy Central site. Just moments ago, I was rejecting the option of downloading some microshaft sliverlite to watch the daily show on the weird canadian comedy site to which I was redirected when attempting to go to comedycentral.com

I was sure that some hackers had compromised the Comedy Central page and were redirecting me to a malware laden site of doom. The crude 'you are being re-directed' page did not inspire confidence.

In any case, this new site is enormously better. I look forward to people linking more choice clips here. (Zell Miller at the Republican National Convention?)
posted by sindark at 9:09 PM on October 18, 2007

Absalom, thank you for the 9/11 clip. I remember when it broadcast. Crying now. Irony didn't die. But the sentiment of we're-all-in-this-together has suffered losses.
posted by McLir at 9:12 PM on October 18, 2007 [1 favorite]

It currently says '7,128' videos online, so I guess we're just over halfway there.

I hope they hit 13k soon, because I'm dying to find the segment of 'Even Stevphen' where the Steves get shit-faced drunk over the course of a night-long beer-drinking experiment. Fried gold, that.
posted by skammer at 9:12 PM on October 18, 2007

For whatever reason, Firefox can't handle these clips on my mac and it's tearing my heart out. But big thanx to pokermonk for the Beth Littleford link. She was the highlight of the Kilborn years for me. Those Vasoline smeared FTD moneyshots never fail to crack me up. Bring 'er back plz!!1!
posted by maryh at 9:24 PM on October 18, 2007

It's disappointing that the search doesn't work so well. Damn you, Rick Sanchez!
posted by dhammond at 9:37 PM on October 18, 2007

Stephen Colbert's report on the space shuttle in danger.
posted by Kattullus at 9:50 PM on October 18, 2007

I thought Vance Degeneres's faux newsman mannerisms were perfect (hilarious male-chastity-belt-related interview at that link). Am I the only person in the world who thought he was really funny?
posted by ibmcginty at 9:53 PM on October 18, 2007

I was just talking with my friend today about how I could watch The Daily Show from outside the US. Little did I know it would be this easy! Thank you, powers that be!
and McLir for the link, and everyone for linking the best clips!
posted by mosessis at 9:58 PM on October 18, 2007

This makes me very happy. Not even a hint of buffering from over here across the Pacific, which is unusual, no matter how much bandwidth I have to play with.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:09 PM on October 18, 2007

Spoke too soon. Some clips are fine, some just don't seem to work. Ah well.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:26 PM on October 18, 2007

This makes me very happy. Not even a hint of buffering from over here across the Pacific, which is unusual, no matter how much bandwidth I have to play with.

I strongly suspect this is confirmation bias at play. If you look at the actual streaming files, they're coming from the exact same source, akamai.net, as they were on Comedy Central's site. The only thing that's changed is the interface surrounding the videos.

On preview, yep, there you go.
posted by scottreynen at 10:29 PM on October 18, 2007

If you look at the actual streaming files, they're coming from the exact same source, akamai.net, as they were on Comedy Central's site.

Not what I meant. I've never looked at the Comedy Central site (I've downloaded Daily Show and Colbert with bittorrent for years and will continue to do so). But there's not a single streaming site (almost all of which use Flash these days, of course) that won't crap out and start buffering on me at least once in a while, despite the fact that I have a 100Mbit connection at home and better than that at work.

It's probably routing inside Korea being goofy.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:34 PM on October 18, 2007

maudlin : Wow. Baby-faced Jon in a cheap suit that's too big for him.

Well described. And accurately defining my look through that same time period. Unfortunately for me, I have not gotten a really nice endorsement deal, so Jon now looks awesome, and I still look like I did in about 1995, just less baby-faced.

peep : Stephen Colbert breaks character and loses his shit.

You have sussed out one of my absolute favorite TDS moments of all time. I remember that segment airing, and I loved pulling my Wife downstairs to rewind the tivo and witness it's genius;

Here you have two really great comedians, both of whom are basing their humor on their ability to deliver deadpan lines, and both of whom failing because they have succumbed to the Effect. (unstoppable, uncontrollable, and infectious laughter.)

They don't have a chance. And this clip demonstrates that. Though, it also shows how good they are at trying to regain control.

... Jon.
posted by quin at 10:46 PM on October 18, 2007

For irony's sake, I just made a tool for downloading Daily Show clips.
posted by scottreynen at 11:26 PM on October 18, 2007 [11 favorites]

Flash sucks
posted by finite at 11:59 PM on October 18, 2007

Flash sucks

Never heard that one before 'round here! Kudos on being such a contrarian!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:12 AM on October 19, 2007

John Hodgman's keys to success, recent and brilliant.
posted by McLir at 12:37 AM on October 19, 2007

stavros, sorry to bore you by stating the obvious.
scottreynen, thank you very much, that is just what I was was looking for.
posted by finite at 1:15 AM on October 19, 2007

Flash sucks

No, RealPlayer sucks. So does streaming QuickTime. Those were what commercial sites used to use.

Also, any software that brings us The Fifth Annual Stephen Colbert Objectivist Children Sleepover is good software.
posted by Gary at 1:19 AM on October 19, 2007

I've been watching the Daily Show clips for a while like this:

1. Install Net Transport or your favorite download manager that can handle streaming files;
2. install the Media Player Connectivity extension for Firefox, and configure it to launch Net Transport for .wmv files;
3. go to this Daily Show page and choose the clip you want to see; and
4. click on the placeholder, select the URL that starts with mms:// in the pop-up dialog, and download the clip to your computer to watch at your convienence. In fact, this last step works best if you set up a Media Player Connectivity icon in your toolbar. Then you can simply right-click on the icon and choose the file you want directly.

This way you can watch the files when you want to, and don't have to deal with any buffering issues. It would be much, much easier if they had direct links to their videos on one page so that you could you an extension like DownThemAll!, but you work with what you have.

Of course, this new site will probably ruin everything.
posted by moonbiter at 2:02 AM on October 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is awesome (I hate the Comedy Central site). And I have to say - I love Jon Stewart.
posted by bluesky43 at 4:52 AM on October 19, 2007

seriously, who the hell uses WMV anymore?

Uhh, it's not WMV, it's in Flash.

No, it (meaning the old Motherload site) displayed video clips as WMVs embedded in a Flash interface. Which is why I have Flip4Mac installed on my Powerbook right now (I had a related question up on AskMe a while back).
posted by spaceman_spiff at 5:17 AM on October 19, 2007

I had to stop watching the 911 clip. But thanks so much for everything else. And especially to scottreynen - now I can put my fave clips on the ipod.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:02 AM on October 19, 2007

It's actually available internationally. That's a big thing. I guess everyone of us is allowed to buy Hyundai!

Great stuff, and here's hoping this is picked up by more broadcasters.
posted by Harry at 8:45 AM on October 19, 2007

Even Stevphens:

Halloween (2000)

The Clinton Years (2001)

World's Policeman or World's Fireman (2002)
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:38 AM on October 19, 2007 [2 favorites]

Gay Penguins!
posted by streetdreams at 10:19 AM on October 19, 2007

Actually, it's been online for a while, at least new episodes. The problem was they were on Comedy Central's "Motherload" site which is a usability nightmare. Seriously.

Not if you use the back door.
posted by EarBucket at 10:54 AM on October 19, 2007 [4 favorites]

Fresh Air
posted by McLir at 12:10 PM on October 19, 2007 [1 favorite]

There's no Kilborn because the show was funnier back then. Not as political but Kilborn was the kind of blond Aryan talking head that would have made Hitler (or Rupert Murdoch) proud. With Winstead as his mouthpiece it was perfect. I was very sad when Kilborn left and the show is still great but in a much different way now.
posted by any major dude at 12:09 PM on October 20, 2007

Craig Kilborn ready to return to The Daily Show.
posted by Curry at 12:05 PM on October 23, 2007

The story that made me fall in love with Stephen Colbert.

My favorite Ad Nauseam.

They do not appear to have the clip where Colbert announced his real name was Ted Hitler and that he'd killed a panda.

I couldn't find the bit where Al Sharpton stood up the Daily Show and Colbert ... substituted for him. But they show a bit of it here.
posted by sparkletone at 4:03 AM on October 25, 2007