Open Letter to NBC

Friday, February 17th, 2006

I read this and for some reason was moved to tell NBC I think they suck. Of course, they have no main customer email, so I had to send it to webmaster@

Dear NBCUniversalGeneralElectric,

Your site doesn’t list a general comments location, so I guess webmaster is it.

I just saw this blurb over at youtube: http://youtube.com/blog

Bad Form. Really, Really bad.

Lazy Sunday is one of the most virulent of viral media I’ve seen in years. It literally was on nearly every site I frequent. I watched it at YouTube, and went back to view it on YouTube several times and gave the URL to friends.

This sparked the discussion of whether SNL was finally “not sucking” anymore.

Get the idea? People were talking about one of your shows, one which hasn’t been, you know, funny in years.

And lest you say you have to protect copyright violations, by law, or you could lose your claim, yes, you’re right, you do.

But think about this; you lost nothing by having that video out there. Sure, YouTube gets a bit of cash to defray hosting by putting a few google ads. But you only gained from the transaction.

You could have protected your copyright by granting a free license to YouTube and asking they display a copyright notice on the page. You’d have gained considerable “cred” with tech savvy people who are starting to move away from television as the primary source of their media.

Where would they get it? At places like YouTube.

Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious

-Chris Thompson