Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 26, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Comedy Central, the television broadcaster belonging to MTV Networks, is making its cartoon series South Park available online for free. Fans of the production can legally watch all previously broadcast episodes on the Internet via video stream, interrupted by only three commercials. Downloading to one’s own computer is not possible, however. In addition to streams of the full-length programmes, users and website operators are now also offered around 3,000 trailers from the series. These can be embedded in their own websites, which is not possible with the complete South Park episodes.
Rather than trying to get Internet piracy under control through legal action and pursuing users, as most of the film, television and music industry attempts to do, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone are following the opposite strategy and relying on the free offering.
Together with broadcaster Comedy Central, they are opening a digital animation studio as a joint venture and dividing the resulting advertising revenue between them in two equal shares. Toyota and Mastercard are currently the main sponsors.
The commercials in the free online versions cannot be fast-forwarded, but are marked on the timeline. According to US media, the initiative is intended to bypass the previously widespread illegal offering of South Park scenes on the video portal YouTube.
Further digital functions within the online studio also allow users to create their own South Park charactërs, for example. Compared with broadcasts on conventional television, the online versions also offer the advantage of being viewable uncensored. The website currently contains more than 150 episodes from all twelve seasons. Production of at least three new seasons over the coming years was already begun last year.
It remains unclear whether there will also be a free German-language version of South Park on the Internet in the future. The original versions can already be accessed here as well. New episodes not yet shown on television will only go online after they have been broadcast. With the publication, MTV Networks is fulfilling the promise it made in November of last year to offer South Park on the web. In addition to South Park content, the virtual studio is also intended to host content from other animated Parker and Stone projects in the future and serve as a promotional springboard
Further Links:
- Original versions available at
