C-SPAN: The Tom Cruise Of Boring TV?

C-SPAN, the preferred viewing choice of insomniacs everywhere, has ordered two online video sites to pull Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's much-talked-about appearance at the White House Correspondents dinner last month:

The cable network asked two Internet video providers, YouTube and IFILM, to pull clips of Stephen Colbert's April 29 performance at the White House Correspondents Association dinner from their Web sites.

C-SPAN said it contacted the companies because the copyrighted material was posted online without its permission.

Both YouTube and IFILM complied with the request.

Colbert hosts a satirical current events show on Comedy Central and performed his comedy routine at the correspondent's dinner.

YouTube posted the Colbert video shortly after the dinner ended and received the letter to remove it May 3, according to Julie Supan, senior director of marketing. The Colbert video was viewed 2.7 million times in less than 48 hours, she said.

The last I heard, there are no Nielsen ratings available for C-SPAN (actually, Nielsen can capture the information, so more correctly stated is: C-SPAN, since it does not sell commercial time, does not subscribe to the Nielsen service -- therefore Nielsen doesn't publish the information). But 2.7 million viewers would have to be about two week's worth -- and that's being generous -- for C-SPAN which, surveys estimate, has about 50 million viewers). If this clip was rated among cable shows, it would be near the top 15, albeit below professional wrestling, several of the 354 "Law and Order" reruns and "A Goofy Movie."

Instead, C-SPAN screamed copyright infringement, showing itself to be worthy of the label "Old Media," or maybe even the Tom Cruise of Boring TV. Shouldn't a copyright actually have value before you waste time enforcing it? What in the hell happens on C-SPAN that anyone wants to watch, except maybe one or twice a year at some banquet. And when it happens, you should be glad your network's logo is splashed all over the Internet.

Conspiracy theorists debate: Is C-SPAN protecting President Bush, who was supposedly skewered by Colbert, or is it protecting Colbert, who really wasn't that funny?