Academy Threatens YouTube. Some Oscars Clips Removed

Posted on February 28, 2007

Variety is reporting that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has ordered YouTube to pull clips from the Oscars telecast. Some clips have already been removed from YouTube's database.

Ric Robertson, exec administrator for the Academy, said the organization had its content pulled "to help manage the value of our telecast and our brand."

The official Oscar.com Website, which is run as a joint venture of the Academy and Disney's ABC.com, features a five-minute clip of highlights from the three hour, 51 minute broadcast. That footage, along with "Thank-You Cam" videos from backstage, are preceded by ads.

But Robertson said that the ads weren't a factor: "Even if Oscar.com didn't have clips, we would have asked YouTube to take remove the excerpts."

There are a bunch of videos here on Oscar.com which is where ABC wants you to watch them. However, there is no way to embed them and sometimes the videos seem to load slowly. They also didn't do a very good job with the videos. For example, you can't find individual acceptance speeches.

On some blogs YouTube video clips from the Oscars now show the dreaded NLA (no longer available) message. Variety says one of the few remaining clips from the Oscars is just the iPhone ad which isn't really worth rewatching. If you search Oscars 2007 you still find quite a few including Martin Scorsese's Best Director win -- but these clips may not last long.

From a publicity standpoint a good argument could be made that the Academy should have let the videos run for at least a week or two on YouTube because of the buzz that was being generated by having blogs promoting the clips. The bigger the buzz gets for the Oscars the more people that may tune in for 2008's telecast.

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