She Likes to Watch

My friend Dan and I frequently gripe about the entertainment industry’s failure to adapt to new technology. In particular, the music business, which had grown accustomed to gouging us with exorbitant CD prices, failed to adapt to the Internet age and suddenly found its music being shared online — gasp — FOR FREE!

Instead of finding a way to use the Internet to everyone’s advantage, the Recording Industry Association of America (also known as the RIAA or, simply, “evil”) decided on a better solution: Threaten to sue every 15-year-old boy who’s ever downloaded a Green Day song and shared it with his buds.

That’ll make us feel better about high prices and crappy new artists!

Now that Junior is scared straight, TV is taking a similar approach, with Viacom and other organizations threatening to sue YouTube for posting copyrighted material. One of the great things about YouTube is that you can go there to see practically every music video ever shown on MTV and VH1. Trust me, you won’t see Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” on either of those channels today. But Viacom, which owns most MTV and VH1 content, doesn’t want you to see it anywhere else. So it has threatened to sue YouTube for $1 billion.

Sorry, Bonnie — we know you’d like the exposure after all these years. But it’s just (bad) business.

Fortunately, some in the entertainment industry — including a Los Osos celebrity — get it.

This week we learned that more than 200 episodes of “The Gumby Show” will be posted online at sites like YouTube, Google, and AOL/In2TV. The pilot, Gumby on the Moon, is already available for viewing.

Gumby is, of course, the little green — unless you can think of something else to call him — clay dude who embarks on a variety of adventures. He’s artsy, silly and more than a bit trippy. Gumby creator Art Clokey lives in Los Osos, as does his son Joe, who has taken over Gumby’s business ventures. Both have made it their mission to keep Gumby in the limelight, and this is yet another step in that direction.

This week, DMGI, a digital distributor of independently owned music, TV and video catalogs, announced that it was posting Gumby (which it licensed from Classic Media and Premavision) online. Joe Clokey helped prepare the episodes by remastering them.

The timing was no coincidence. Friday was the 50th anniversary of “The Gumby Show” premiere.

If you still want to see Gumby on your TV, “The Essential Gumby” DVD collection comes out in the fall.

In the meantime, check out Bonnie Tyler while you still can.

– Pat P.