Last June, fans of Comedy Central – the long-running channel behind beloved programmes such as The Daily Show and South Park – received an unwelcome surprise. Paramount Global, Comedy Central’s parent company, unceremoniously purged the vast repository of video content on the channel’s website, which dated back to the late 1990s.
Every Daily Show episode since Jon Stewart took over as host in 1999? Disappeared. The historic remains of The Colbert Report? Disappeared. Presumably, one hopes, those materials remain archived internally somewhere, but for the general masses, they’re kaput. Instead, the links redirect visitors to Paramount+, a streaming service whose offerings pale in comparison. (The service offers recent seasons of the Daily Show to paying subscribers, but only a fraction of the prior archive.)
Such digital demolitions are becoming routine. For fans and scholars of pop culture, 2024 may go down as the year the internet shrank. Despite the immense archiving capabilities of the internet, we’re living through an age of mass deletion, a moment when entertainment and media corporations see themselves not as custodians of valuable cultural history, once freely available, but as ruthless maximisers of profit. Those of us who believe in the historical value of accessing media from the past are paying the price.
How Music Works by David Byrne. It was recommended to me by a colleague when asked about good resources on learning more about music.
I'm only in chapter 3, so far it's been interesting. About how music has adapted since the introduction of recordings, about the shifting perceptions, not only in music but also showmanship, size of venues, choice of instruments. The current chapter is about the different recording media and their impact on the music.
All very interesting, although I do hope it will soon delve deeper into the nitty gritty: notes and intervals, progressions, and all the things I'm still totally unaware of.