Enabling CGM

The popularity of consumer generated media sites like YouTube are well documented. The San Francisco Chronicle recently reported that YouTube receives over 100 million video views per day by over 16 million daily viewers. Not bad for a site that consists primarily of content created by individuals.

In an interesting move, Comedy Central is enabling users to create their own videos of Steven Colbert. The Colbert Report, a popular show on Comedy Central, has issued the Green Screen Challenge to viewers of the show. Users are encouraged to take video of Colbert acting out a Star Wars type fight scene in front of a green screen and create their own video with the footage. Here is an example of a user created video posted on YouTube.

Colbert vs. Star Wars Kid


The promotion has been tremendously successful. To date, the promotion has created over 500,000 video views using the footage. Odds are pretty good that some of those users tuned in to watch the show as well.