TVA pulls shows from YouTube: Tolerated clips. Drew line at having full shows posted

by Roberto Rocha
The Montreal Gazette
Jan 17, 2007

The YouTube menace has hit Quebec, with French-language network TVA the latest to ask the video-sharing site to take down clips of its shows.

The network had tolerated the sharing of small clips of its shows until now, but it has gone too far, a spokesperson for TVA said.

"When it started to multiply and include content with the entire show, we were faced with a new and unpredictable phenomenon," Luc Lavoie said.

"The problem is that Canadian content is being sucked into this American platform," he said. "And YouTube is selling ads on our programs."

So far, YouTube has pulled all videos that have the tag TVA (a tag is a keyword that a user gives a video when it is submitted to the site).

However, TVA clips can be found on other video-sharing sites, including the notorious clip of Celine Dion's family botching a musical performance on live TV.

This anarchic nature of the Internet is something broadcasters will have to adapt to, an analyst in Toronto said.

"Content wants to be free and that's the direction we're going," said Donna Hall, senior director of Solutions Research Group. "People will have to realize that and find new ways to monetize content."

Video sharing today is a part of social currency, Hall remarked, part of young people's daily dialogue. "And they realize this is, in effect, a promotion for whatever content they're talking about," she said.

Asked if TVA shows resurface on other sites, Lavoie replied: "We'll deal with it when it comes to that."

TVA's owner, Quebecor, will allow clips to be hosted on its own social networking portal, EspacesCanoe, a stripped-down francophone version of MySpace that is still in testing phase. The site will be able to handle video in about four weeks, Lavoie said.

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