A little over a month since it launched its own branded channel on YouTube, CBS now boasts some of the highest views on the video sharing site. Since it first began uploading clips on October 18, CBS's content has had almost thirty million views. Currently there are over 300 clips from shows like Late Night with David Letterman, CSI, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, The Early Show and NCIS. Not to mention CBS News programs and sports highlights. CBS believes having their content on YouTube has been a factor in increased ratings of the television broadcasts of these same series.

I have to wonder, though, is this really news? Isn't saying CBS had the most views on YouTube like saying King Kong has a greater vertical leap than Bonzo the monkey? I'm all about free access to TV shows --clips and otherwise-- on the Web, but while CBS congratulates itself on being a corporation with the power to saturate YouTube, is there some great independent content being pushed further into the background? It seems impossible to have the best of both worlds.

Apparently freelance writer Ben Schwartz has had his blog rejectedjokes.com going for over a year now, but this was the first I heard of it, thanks to Best Week Ever. Schwartz, a freelance writer who contributes to Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment and David Letterman's monologues, knows what all freelance writers know, which is that you're going to see a lot more rejection than acceptance. Rather than mope about it, however, he posts videos of himself telling these rejected jokes. While I can see why some of these jokes would be denied by the likes of Letterman, most of them are still pretty funny, I think. Oh yeah, and due to some weird contractual thing, he's not able to post the jokes until a year later, which is kind of a bummer, but the blog is still worth checking out.

Who the hell is Spike Feresten? He's a comedy writer who has written for both The Late Show with David Letterman and Seinfeld (you know the "Soup Nazi" episode? That was him). Perhaps we shouldn't get too excited about a talk show from this unknown, but let's keep in mind Conan began as an unknown, too. The new late night talk show, titled Talk Show with Spike Feresten, will have some of the elements of a "normal" talk show while simultaneously being a parody of the genre. Wait, didn't Martin Mull and Fred Willard already do that with Fernwood 2Nite in the late 70s? Well, no matter, the show sounds kind of cool. It will air only on Saturdays, opposite Saturday Night Live. This will be the first time Fox has ventured into the late night talk realm since Chevy Chase tried his hand at it. The show will debut on September 16 after MadTV.