• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, October 18, 2007

After pulling all clips from YouTube in February, Viacom is making skits from Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" available on its own Web site.

The plan, according to today's Los Angeles Times, is to post 13,000 clips from episodes dating back to 1999 on www.dailyshow.com. Clips will be monetized by ads; the Times reports that Viacom is mulling ads that play for just two or three seconds before a clip, then run on the bottom corner of the screen.

Obviously, the venture is an experiment, marking Viacom's attempts to figure out what will work online. And, while posting clips on a Viacom-owned site makes more sense than letting them gather dust in a vault, the new initiative might not be the best way to get clips seen.

For one thing, with high-profile ventures like Joost and Hulu ready to claim a share of the growing Web video market, attempting to corral all of a show's clips on one site doesn't seem like an optimal strategy. Also, while the new site is still a work-in-progress, it's not yet clear whether Viacom intends to add features that will encourage the viral spread of clips. But without that ability, the site's potential seems limited.