Congratulations to our decorated clip-show customer, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who just picked up their eighth straight Emmy for Best Variety, Music or Comedy Series. It’s no wonder that Jon Stewart and his team have held on to such a supreme winning streak; they churn out 168 fresh episodes per year at a rigorous pace. That’s four tapings weekly, 42 weeks out of the year.

As The Daily Show unit floated to the stage on cloud nine, the Emmy commentator prodded, “I am not sure that the Academy would be so quick to award The Daily Show these things if they knew what we used the Emmys for around the office. Executive Producer Rory Albanese will accept for the program because Jon Stewart is too busy resting in his bed of melted Emmys.”

Who knows why Jon Stewart really wasn’t present, but Albanese was certainly in high spirits as he acknowledged the caliber of the fellow nominees.

“This is crazy. Stephen Colbert went to Iraq. Conan. This category is insane,” Albanese exclaimed in disbelief.

Insane, indeed. We are so darn proud of The Daily Show for their continued success and back-to-back critical acclaim. And we have to give them props for having in-house TV search technology and a massive digital archive. Here @SnapStream, we always enjoy the hysterical programming that ensues.

“We keep winning it,” Albanese rejoiced in television glory. “It’s tough to feel bad. We work really hard.”

Yes, we know you do! Eight cheers to you all at The Daily Show! Keep up the excellent work!

Here is the full video of Jon Stewart’s Glenn Beck impression shown in the nomination reel:

Rounding up a week in the news with our data collected at TV Trends, here’s a cool word cloud that visually displays the nation’s pulse.  The words are proportionally sized to higher frequency of mention in the closed captioning data, showing the hottest and most prominent issues saturating the headlines. You see, Iraq, Brigade, Combat… Serious stuff.

It’s also fun to compare how news travels differently between TV and the Internet. To track the buzz of online news, check out Google Trends and see for yourself. Which one do you think leads in breaking news first? TV or the Internet? Was it the chicken or the egg?

On July 27, the Library of Congress gave American educators the best back-to-school gift EVER. Better than any orchard-fresh apple or floral bouquet.

Under the newest revisions to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), it’s now considered a-okay to burn DVDs for educational or noncommercial use, which ranges in purpose from research to news reporting.

Among the five other new exemptions, it’s also now 100% legitimate to jailbreak the iPhone. Yet while that’s been plastered all over the news, why has the academic impact garnered so much less media attention?

University Response

Most educators have long assumed that the Fair Use clause which applies to publications would likewise apply to DVDs, and other new forms of digital media. Thus, the sentiment across the educational community is frustration with the federal government for failing to address rapidly emerging technologies, such as streamable and downloadable Internet video.

At Emerson College, where the Journalism Department uses SnapStream, the new copyright exemption is not going to dramatically change the way courses are taught, according to Assistant Journalism Professor Paul Niwa.

“However, the change to the DMCA [does] lift the burden of hypocrisy in the classroom,” Niwa commented in an e-mail.

“It has been uncomfortable for professors to try to convince students to respect copyrights while violating copyrights every time they show a DVD in class.” – Asst. Journalism Professor Paul Niwa, Emerson College

How it Plays Out with SnapStream

As you may know, SnapStream enables not only TV search and clipping, but also DVD burning of recorded televised content. Some professors and teachers like to archive and share files with hard copies, even with the options available for electronic storage and e-mail.

Up until now, this whole matter has openly resided in the “grey area” of copyright law. As the dreamers and makers, we have always put trust in our end-users to do the right thing, to harness our TV Search technology for good, under Fair Use and not Abuse.

But just to make sure no one is ripping movies to enhance a personal DVD collection, we do have tight administrative settings in place to limit and restrict user access to specific features.

In the Future

Looking ahead three years to the next official review cycle of the DMCA, Niwa says that his colleagues will proceed teaching with their best judgment.

“This year’s revision of the DMCA is a missed opportunity to encourage vibrant conversations between citizens about art, ideas and science,” Niwa expressed.

“In the meantime, citizens will continue to connect and create content without explicitly defined copyright protection.”

Hey SnapStream Fans,

Since we’re always tracking the hottest topics on television, we thought we’d whip up a visual word cloud to represent the sizzling trends of the summer. Taking transcript excerpts from peaking keywords on TV Trends from May to present, we made this beautiful conglomerate of headlining news and pop culture.

Just one of the many cool things you can do with the rich information stored in TV Trends–you know it’s open and free for anyone to use, right?

See the original graph that shows the scope of television media coverage.

Last Thursday, I tagged along with Rakesh Agrawal (CEO of SnapStream) to introduce TV search to the regional PIO Network meeting held at the Texas Department of Transportation. I’ll tell you, public information is A LOT to keep up with, especially with all the mutations of social media multiplying every second.

There were all sorts of PIOs represented, from city offices to the Coast Guard. It was cool to see all of these diverse officials gathered with their common, collective concern for public knowledge, safety and health.

The meeting kicked off with Chuck Wolf, an integral media consultant in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill response, which is now transitioning to the gulf restoration response. (Woohoo the well is capped!) At the Joint Information Center headquartered in New Orleans, Chuck and his team dispense a mind-boggling amount of documents–fact sheets, press releases, media advisories–on a 24-7  basis.

“A Joint Information Center is a co-located group of representatives from local, state, federal and private organizations designated to handle public information needs during an incident or event.”

BP has put together quite the team to handle the world’s largest oil spill response. You can see who’s involved at this page of deepwaterinvestigation.com.

Having a tough act to follow, we were the closers in the presenting line-up. (In baseball, that’s a very important job!) Rakesh led the presentation about SnapStream, joined by the insights of Rosie Torres, Assistant PIO, Harris County Office of Emergency Management and Dinah Massie, PIO, Houston TranStar.

At the Harris County OEM, the PIOs recently monitored flash flood warnings during Hurricane Alex. Meanwhile, the Houston TranStar office continually tracks local television news to verify and enforce correct attribution for traffic footage. Those magic words, “courtesy of Houston TranStar” must appear. (Or else, major traffic jams will incur!)

Lastly, we learned the telling results of a media monitoring survey conducted among the Houston-Galveston group. Two major stats to highlight:

That’s what makes SnapStream incredibly relevant for this group. Since many of these municipal agencies share LAN connections, they can pool together and utilize one centralized SnapStream Server to access TV Search and disperse actionable news quickly to their departments. Wouldn’t that be something?