Videos We’d Like to Embed, But Can’t

Showdown at the Walled Corral: Since people watch one because they love it and the other because they hate it, Bill O’Reilly and Stephen Colbert appearing on each other’s shows last night was a very clever exploitation of what I think people in ‘the biz’ like to call synergy. Unfortunately, we can’t show you here how the concept came to life.

On the Colbert Report page, which is the closest I can get to linking to the clip, you have to use the janky slider to scroll to the segment from last night, which is broken into two clips. Over at the O’Reilly Factor, you have to scroll down and click on the “Stephen Colbert Enters the No-spin Zone!” link, which has the temerity to launch in a new window. Here at NewTeeVee, we just copy and paste some code, et voila! Of course, YouTubers are more than happy to oblige us with bootleg clips. You’re probably already watching the clips instead of reading this. — Jackson

Fed Up with Dead Links: Couple nights ago, we noticed an awful lot of traffic and links going to a video for a supposed new single for Britney Spears. The punny song — called “Fed Up” and making oblique reference to Spears’ ongoing divorce from Kevin Federline — was set to a background of rotating Brit shots. It had a quarter million views and reportedly got on the radio. Was it a leak? Well, yes, but not of something that’ll actually be on Spears’ forthcoming album.

Variety reports the song was actually a demo intended to for Britney and her labels’ ears that somehow found its way to YouTube. The clip has since been taken down, making this story much less satisfying to tell.

“We wrote it a month ago and based on the Britney’s separation with Federline with the intention that she might pick it up,” said Adam Blockton, former frontman for the Gotham rock outfit Motherboard. “Now it’s already out there and whoever leaked it is giving the impression that it’s her singing. And people believe that it’s her.”

– Liz