C-SPAN/President Score On YouTube

C-SPAN’s video of President Obama on Saturday night’s White House Correspondents dinner has become the cable public affairs net’s most-watched YouTube video of all time at 5,995,000 views and growing at press time, only five days after only two days on the site, according to C-SPAN.The President’s stand-up routine taking aim at journalists, politicians and others, pushed to number two on C-SPAN’s hit parade the president’s 2009 inauguration speech, which took two years to hit 4.7 million. It is also the most-viewed YouTube video since Saturday night (May 1).

The YouTube video of Saturday Night Live head writer and Weekend Update anchor Seth Meyers’ routine at the dinner  comes in at #7 all time after only two days as well, dropping Stephen Colbert’s Congressional testimony to #8 all-time.

Arguabely Meyers’ best, and rather prescient jokes, came at C-SPAN’s expense. He referred to the “handful” of people watching at home, and referred to the official net of “wide shots of empty chairs. “C-SPAN is one unpaid electric bill away from being a radio station,” he said. Then came the zinger: “People think bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush[mountains], but did you know that every day from four to five he hosts a show on C-SPAN.” (That joke came only hours before bin Laden’s killing by U.S. forces).

He also used C-SPAN to zing his own net, saying that with the four screens he was projected on at the dinner he now became  “the third highest-rated show on NBC.”

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.