Almost a year after Viacom pulled Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert from Hulu.com, an agreement between the two sides has been reached, and we can all get back to the only thing we care about: Watching free television on the Internet.
Under the agreement, current full episodes and clips of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” will be available on the free ad-supported Hulu.com service starting today. Viacom is also loading up on Hulu Plus services, meaning that if you’re desperate for archived episodes of “MANswers” (do vaginas float, y/n) you’re gonna have to pay up. Plus subscribers have access to more than 2,000 episodes of programming from Viacom’s library, including “Tosh.0,” which is a pretty hilarious and sad thing to watch on your computer.
According to reports, Hulu agreed to a guaranteed payment in the $40 million to $50 million range for the show library. That seems like a lot, but the deal included TV Land, and I’m pretty sure that episode of “The Brady Bunch” where Peter wants to play George Washington but gets stuck as Benedict Arnold is worth at least 20 or 30 million.
[Deadline]
