Last night, like most nights, I watched The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on C4. Before the advent of YouTube, I was barely aware that Stewart even existed, and I doubt that TV3/C4 would have picked up his show here had not YouTube been so liberally sprinkled with Daily Show highlights.

Who'd have thought there was an American who could be droll, ironic, left-leaning and very, very funny? Not me, until I saw The Daily Show on the net and got turned on to the full-length TV version (YouTube restricts posts to 12 minutes). And going in the reverse direction, could Kiwi comedy duo Flight of the Conchords have scored a show on US network HBO without their viral success on YouTube?

Of course, not everybody sees the YouTube effect in such sunny terms. US media giant Viacom - whose many properties include CBS and MTV - is suing YouTube owner Google for $US1 billion. According to a recent Vanity Fair, Viacom's 80-something executive chairman Sumner Redstone is not some ancient old world company chief who just doesn't get the net (well, he might have to conceed the ancient part). In fact, he sent one of his top executives to bid for MySpace. He lost to Murdoch's News Corp (and got fired). Then YouTube went to Google. Now Sumner's mighty miffed and playing if you can't buy 'em, sue 'em.

A better approach comes from the BBC and other content makers who see YouTube as a way to popularise content, and/or to introduce a pay-per-view element to the site.