“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” Victims of Viacom and DirecTV War

Online streaming episodes of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” are the latest victims of the war between Viacom and DirecTV. The two media powerhouses have been battling over DirecTV’s unwillingness to pay the user fees that Viacom wants for its 26 channels to appear on the satellite provider’s screens. Tuesday Night, DirectTV was forced to drop all 26 of Viacom’s channels. No longer will DirectTV users get to see Nickelodeon, Comedy Central or MTV any longer.

It used to be that if you had Satellite television, you had to forgo the basic channels, now you have to learn to live without Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

DirecTV has told its customers that even though they can’t watch Comedy Central anymore on their satellite, they have been directing people to the official Comedy Central Website where they can enjoy the shows there.

“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”were also easily embeddable from the Comedy Central site, and they were shown all over the Internet. So Viacom decided to up the ante. The media giant, as of today, said that full episodes of the show will no longer be available on it websites, although they will still put clips there.

Viacom doesn’t seem so concerned about all the people who do not subscribe to DirecTV but are now going to have to do without “the Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report” at all due to the war. The presumption is that the clips will be reinstated when Viacom and DirecTV figure out how to end the standoff and the channels return.