Analysis: President Clinton on Fox News, But Not On YouTube

Authored by Jay Baage on September 26, 2006 - 9:20am.

The Fox News interview with former President Bill Clinton is the network's biggest scoop in a long time. Everyone is talking about it. However, Fox News, on Tuesday, made YouTube take down all postings of it, effectively shutting down one of the biggest discussion forums, as well as distribution channels, promoting it.

The interview with the former president on "Fox News Sunday" is very interesting for a number of reasons. There is the very controversial subject of what the Clinton Administration could have done to handle the threat posed by bin Laden and al-Qaida to prevent 9/11. There is Clinton's claim that he did more than President Bush to get Bin Laden before 9/11, disclosing that he had a secret plan to invade Afghanistan and wipe out the Taliban and Al Qaeda. There is the context of President Bush on Tuesday saying that it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. Next there is the fact that Clinton gets so fired up in this interview, accusing host Chris Wallace of a "conservative hit job" and talking about how Fox News is biased and not asking fair questions to the right people.

Since the interview aired and the buzz about it spread, many people, like myself, turned to YouTube to see the clips. Since a number of clips from the interview were posted on YouTube, the blogosphere has been very active commenting and discussing the many different aspects of this interview. This morning, however, Fox News managed to get YouTube to take down all postings of these videos for "copyright" issues. If you try to access clips of it that were up on YouTube on Monday, it now says: "This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Fox News Network, LLC because its content was used without permission." Now you have to go to Fox News own website to watch the interview.

This illustrates an interesting dilemma that broadcast TV networks like Fox News are facing with new technology and new forms of distribution: Do you see unauthorized clips on webites like YouTube as a good way to promote a show or a network, or is it a threat to the very business model of television, still based on selling 30-second advertising spots?

I think that there are a number of issues to consider here:

First of all, there are direct financial implications. YouTube is a clear competitor to News Corp's own video sites. Many senior News Corp officials have expressed frustration that mainly MySpace is driving lots of traffic away from News Corp to YouTube. When a Fox News story like this has legs, News Corp is now ready to profit from it, having invested a lot of money into infrastructure, interactive advertising and the marketing of its own websites. All of these capabilities become irrelevant, when, for example, people choose to bypass Fox News for YouTube.

Secondly, Fox News has no control over the quality of the material posted on YouTube. This might seem like a minor issue, but the quality of the clips I watched on YouTube was not close to the quality of the material posted on Fox News own website, both in terms of sound, picture and cuts.

Lastly, there is the age-old question of whether all kinds of publicity is good publicity? In other words, if people prefer to watch and discuss the Clinton clips on YouTube, Fox News should let them. After all, News Corp. is reaching people who might not normally watch Fox News and the although the effects of this kind of promotion is hard to measure in financial terms, News Corp. should not retire to making the same kind of mistakes that the music industry made when enforcing copyrights, alienating its audience and creating bad will.

Right now, I think it is hard to make a general call on which strategy is the smartest. In this particular case, I found that the interview played well on Fox News' own website and the unskippable commercials I had to watch were not that annoying. However, you cannot, for example, embed the player in your blog. Then there is the question about what enforcing copyright in this manner will do to word-of-mouth and goodwill to the Fox brand.

In any way, if you have not seen the interview, it is well worth watching. Now only on FoxNews.com.

UPDATE: It seems that on Tuesday afternoon, either the folks at Fox News changed their stance, or they just can't keep up with all the copies of this popular video floating around YouTube. Because this video had not been removed and a few other clips were also up there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYNI5RPOlp4

Related Links:
www.foxnews.com
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Comments

Bill Clinton with Chris

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on September 26, 2006 - 11:01am.

Bill Clinton with Chris Matthews: http://movies.crooksandliars.com/fox_fns_clinton_.mov

If Fox insisted that the Fox

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on September 27, 2006 - 3:48am.

If Fox insisted that the Fox clip of the Clinton interview on FNS due to copyright restrictions, why are they allowing a thousand plus other Fox clips on You Tube. Selective enforcement? Sure it is. Their boy got his assed kicked.

No one cares about the other thousand plus clips

Submitted by robert on September 27, 2006 - 4:13am.

It is selective enforcement because no one cares about the other videos. The ideal solution would be for Fox to embed advertising in their clips and let the clips go wherever they may.

The conspiracy is over

Submitted by robert on September 27, 2006 - 5:27am.

The conspiracy is over...
NB: Fox Restores Clinton Videos on YouTube

This Could Be An Advertising Issue

Submitted by Glenn (not verified) on September 27, 2006 - 12:17pm.

When in doubt, follow the money. Fox posted links to a few clips in its article about the Clinton interview. The Fox video clips come with advertising. Fox may not have wanted to risk angering its advertisers by letting people view the clips elsewhere. Or, Fox may have wanted to lure new advertisers based on the Clinton traffic. That seems more likely that a copyright argument.

Only the popular get enforced...

Submitted by What is YouTube? (not verified) on March 10, 2007 - 2:00pm.

Only the popular mews stories get the copyright enforcment, it seems. If a clip won't generate Fox advertising revenue, then they're happy enough to let YouTube foot the bandwidth bill.