Jon Stewart and Lorne Michaels on YouTube

Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, gets it. Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels gets it. Viacom management doesn't.

The neuter third-person singular in this case is YouTube - or, to be more precise, the promotional value of the video sharing service. The management has some legitimate concerns. Apparently Mr. Michaels is involved in the process for clearing clips to appear, and anything from music or material copyright to the practicalities of agreements with unions or guilds can kill a clip.

But plenty of material that could go up doesn't, and this is where Viacom management falls down when it has its legal department send out the official "take that damned clip down" notices. I understand wanting to get paid for work; I make my living in writing and photography, and like getting checks. But I also understand thatyou have to think bigger. Customer word-of-mouth is something that most companies would love to have, because it's the most effective type of marketing. Yet Viacom still doesn't seem to get the zeitgeist - literally the spirit of the current time. There is only so far people can go in describing what they saw: "There was this really funny bit on the Daily Show. Jon Stewart ... uh ...well, he was talking about the administration and said ... I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was so funny!"

YouTube is nothing more or less than word-of-mouth made manifest. This is how people are describing what they enjoyed, except they're talking to hundreds ... or thousands ... or hundreds of thousands of people. And if you don't start to get the spirit of how things happen these days rather than wishing for days of how they used to be, you won't ultimately stand a ghost of a chance of getting the business benefits that are there for the asking.