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Well this is strange. YouTube reinstated all of the Chris Wallace - Bill Clinton interview videos that were removed from the site yesterday. The action by YouTube was done without explanation and without notice.

I received e-mail notice from Ms. Underestimated when she noticed that her previously deleted video had been restored. Sure enough mine is back up along with all the others.

I had actually gone to the trouble of completely removing the video post after receiving the DCMA complaint e-mail. Yet YouTube restored the post intact. This must have been an administrative nightmare.

As I noted earlier, it would be nice to know what happened with the purge.

Hopefully it is something along the lines of Fox News having had second thoughts. This interview incident has been great for their network.

This whole episode has been one of the most bizarre media blitzes to hit the internet in a long time. There is not much information out there on the video purge and I have yet to hear back from Fox or YouTube. This is a bit frustrating. I will update as information comes in.

Update: Aparrently YouTube is going to remain mum about the whole incident. However both TVNewser and Newsbusters have updates on what happened.

According to TVNewser the dot com side of Fox got a little angry at all the lost traffic.

Even FNC’s hosts cited the video’s #1 status on YouTube — apparently to the chagrin of their colleagues on the dot com side. “I hear that the FoxNews.com folks were getting pissed about it,” an insider says. “They have the whole interview on their site but the on-air folks kept steering people to YouTube.”

Think of how much ad revenue could have been generated if Fox news had released an ad laced clip with the ability to embed. I think this is a golden opportunity for media companies if they wise up.

Matthew Sheffield at Newsbusters has some great insights:

At least initially, Fox failed to realize that far from harming their interests, web sites like YouTube actually help promote the network in a way that it can’t. Many people instinctively distrust the “MSM” or “corporate media” (depending on your perspective). Online video sites provide a way for people to look at things from the grassroots, it also great for television shows (especially “Fox News Sunday” which is primarily watched by older viewers) to expand their market share. Good to see someone realized this at Fox News and pushed for the reversal.

Exactly right! I still believe that the media world is slow to respond to the ever increasing reach of the Internet and technologies that capitalize on high speed internet. This typically results in attempts to limit technology rather than foster its growth. Hopefully we will not see an overreaction by those who are slow to catch up.

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