"The Daily Show" hits the web

Fans of "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" who were miffed when Viacom/MTV Networks ordered clips of the show pulled down from YouTube are in for a treat. Because the show is coming to the internet in a big way.

At noon EST today, DailyShow.com goes live, presenting nearly the entire video archive of the show for the past nine years.

That translates to over 16,000 video clips that include headlines, correspondent pieces, celebrity guest appearances and classic commentary segments from Lewis Black and Stephen Colbert. The new site will also feature community-oriented features such as message boards. You won't be able to get complete episodes, but those could, for the most part, conceivably be pieced together by those that really feel the need to do so. And since the online archives so far go back only as far as 1999, fans of the show's original host (and there may just very well be), Craig Kilborn, will have to wait until next year, when the first three years of the show are made available.

Clips from the previous night's episode will be posted early the next morning. A timeline feature will help users locate archived clips by date and search tools. Tags based on names of correspondents, guests or even specific subjects (such as "Iraq") will also help in searching out clips

The new site will be the only place to see legal "Daily Show" clips online, though a spokesman said that a few selected clips could become available on sites through syndication deals. The show recently did this with Yahoo for correspondent Rob Riggle's reports from Iraq. Whether clips will be made available to linking by other sites and blogs, ala YouTube, is unknown at this time.

Comedy Central also has plans to roll out a similar site for "The Colbert Report" sometime next year, as well as the network's other programming.