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Was Jon Stewart’s Poke at Viacom Responsible for Shows Getting Back Online? (Here’s the Video)

Jul 18, 2012  •  Post A Comment

Jon Stewart returned to "The Daily Show" Monday night and blasted his bosses at Viacom for pulling the company’s shows from online sites — and the next day the company decided to put its programs back online, including "The Daily Show," reports the New York Post.

Stewart criticized both Viacom and DirecTV, which are in the midst of a carriage dispute that’s left DirecTV’s roughly 20 million customers without Viacom’s cable networks.

"Viacom, DirecTV, what are you doing here?” he said. “You’ve got ad campaigns blaming each other for taking the shows away, telling people to rise up and demand it like it’s some kind of basic cable Arab Spring.

“I’ve got news for you — it’s not.”

Stewart went on to compare Viacom to China for pulling its shows from online sites during the dispute. As we reported last week, Viacom removed some of its free programming from its websites.

On Tuesday Viacom said it would put its shows back online, and cited Stewart’s "wasting no time weighing in" on the dispute. "We hope this is helpful to our fans with DirecTV who have yet to switch to a cable/satellite provider that carries Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and all our 26 networks," Viacom said in a blog post.

Here’s a clip of Stewart’s rant about the dispute:

One Comment

  1. How about Stewart wadong in on the Dish-AMC/Sundance dispute.. Its left a bunch of us with our d—‘s hanging out

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