The Motherload

The Motherload

Comedy Central embarks on it's first major foray into the world of convergence of TV and Internet content. While they have made certain segments of their programming available over the web for some time now, they have recently announced a new initiative called "The Motherload" where they will repurpose a significant amount of short segments aired on the main Comedy Central TV station. They will also include some unique content for the web only.

Comedy Central is taking a very unique approach by mostly limiting the online video clips to about 3 minutes in length. They have an advantage here because many of their most popular shows like Jon Stewarts Daily Show and The Colbert Report have short segments that can easily be chopped up for this type of distribution.

This works well for Internet surfers who tend to be multi-tasking (like talking on IM) and have short attention spans because they are active and jumping around unlike TV viewers who are relaxing on the couch and tend to want to settle down with a particular program.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment works.