Boy, we had some good news today about the Internet.
How good was it?
It was so good, that you'd have thought they'd announced that every surviving recording of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was being uploaded to the Web.
And if you thought something do deliriously, wonderfully nutso . . . you are correct, sir!
YES! IT'S TRUE! We found this ABC News story a bit down the Information Superhighway, just past the Slauson Cutoff:
Johnny Carson went off the air long before the age of YouTube and viral video, but now, 18 years after stepping down from "The Tonight Show," he's making a comeback online.
Carson Entertainment Group (CEG), which owns the archive of the late-night host's 30 years on "The Tonight Show," announced today that it has digitized all 3,300 hours of existing footage from Carson's reign and created a searchable online database for media professionals.
While the library is only accessible to those who license clips for professional purposes, CEG plans later this year to put out 50 full-format shows on DVD and post a rotating group of 40 to 50 historic clips for general consumption on JohnnyCarson.com.
"I can't believe there's so much interest after all these years, it's wonderful," said Jeff Sotzing, president of CEG, Carson's nephew and a former "Tonight" producer. "The show had such a large audience for such a long time. It was such a big part of people's lives. I don't think you have that anymore because the television viewing audience is so fragmented."
Until 1999, Carson's archive had been stored in a salt mine in Kansas. It was impossible to view as a whole because the show had been recorded in three different media formats. Last year, Sotzig reached out to Deluxe Archive Solutions to transfer the footage to a digital format. Now, producers and researchers can call up Carson clips by plugging a keyword into the online database.
"We realized that if we could make this footage accessible in a non-linear fashion, more people would be able to experience this material," Sotzig said.
WHAT DOES your humble correspondent make of this news? I dunno, how about "HIYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"?