Daily Commentary – Monday, October 5th, 2009 – Letterman and Extortion … CBS Scrubs Videos on YouTube

Dana feels it’s inappropriate for Letterman to be cracking jokes about the man who tried to extort him over an affair with a staffer.

Daily Commentary – Monday, October 5th, 2009 – Letterman and Extortion [1:40m]: Download

Looks like CBS does not want the public to see Dave’s Mea Culpa seen by others on YouTube. The network did not post an official copy of the apology segment from Letterman’s show; however, numerous copies were uploaded to YouTube. CBS flagged the video citing copyright claims. So is a Letterman mea culpa is scrubbed from YouTube and no one is there to see it, did it actually ever take place?

Keeping quiet about an apparent extortion attempt against David Letterman and “The Late Show,” CBS worked over the weekend to stamp out unauthorized copies of the late-night host’s televised explanation.

Copies of the segment were uploaded almost immediately to YouTube by users, but many of them were flagged by CBS for removal, citing copyright claims. The network did not provide an official copy.

“It’s incredibly odd to see CBS sitting on viral gold like that, especially when you consider how they spew out dozens of official clips a day,” said David Burch, a marketing director at TubeMogul, which tracks online viewership of videos.

Mediaite states Videos of Letterman’s mea culpa don’t need to be authorized. They’re news. Check your Fair Use rules.

However, it does’t seem that they have scrubbed all the videos. So is it because Letterman laughed his way through the entire segment making fun of the affair? If Letterman saw fit to do it on his show, the extortion incident became news, then why does CBS see fit to take news down off the Internet? Let’s see how long the videos last HERE.

Letterman’s video discussing the extortion is just creepy.