Really? Was Ricky's ethnicity made fun of in the show? I never saw any of that, but I haven't seen much of I Love Lucy. I don't think that they constantly made fun of Ricky, but his accent and other things created humorous moments. There is nothing racist about this clip, for instance, in which Ricky's accent creates humor, and Ricky points out the stupidity of English spelling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBXl0vPzFSA. His accent is cute and funny, and Desi plays it up for humor.

See, to ME it always seemed like Ricky was the intelligent, successful, exasperated one, and that his dumb blonde wife was always screwing things up.

>> ^entr0py:

And yes, you have to be a bit stupid not to realize that the way Ricky's ethnicity was constantly made fun of was racist, and would probably be offensive to most people from that part of the world.

I Love Lucy!

Fixed and thanks.

In reply to this comment by mintbbb:
*dead =( Sorry, just helping to clean up http://www.videosift.com/playlists/eric3579/dead (this is a recorded message!)

What show is this?

On a different note, I saw a very old movie from the '30's once which had William Frawley in it (Fred from I Love Lucy). The kicker was he had hair! Still sounded the same though.

I would have liked 'I Love Lucy' more, had it not been my ex's favorite TV show.

It reminds me of that psychotic she-wolf everytime the show's name is mentioned.

Heh, this reminded me of I Love Lucy when Lucy got drunk for doing a TV ad.

I imagine it has something to do with this:
http://www.videosift.com/video/I-Love-Lucy-the-candy-factory

Wikipedia:
Just before filming began on the show, Lucy became pregnant with her and Desi's first child, Lucie Arnaz. They actually filmed the original pilot while Lucy was "showing", but did not include this in the episode.

Later during the second season, Lucy was pregnant again, with second child Desi Arnaz, Jr. This time, they incorporated her pregnancy into the storyline. Despite popular belief, Lucy's pregnancy was not TV's first on-screen pregnancy. That distinction belongs to Mary Kay on the late 1940s sitcom Mary Kay and Johnny.

In this era, saying the words "pregnant" or "pregnancy" on the air was prohibited, so they always described Lucy as "expecting" (or "'spectin'" in Ricky's case). When Lucy finds out she is pregnant, she announces to Ethel: "I am going to have a baby!" The episode "Lucy Is Enceinte" aired on December 8, 1952 ("enceinte" being French for "expecting" or "pregnant"). The episode "Lucy Goes To The Hospital" first aired on January 19, 1953, the same day Lucille Ball gave birth to Desi, Jr., and was watched by more people than any other TV program at that time--a considerable feat, given that Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated President of the United States the very same day. 68% of all American television sets were tuned in to I Love Lucy to watch Lucy when the time arrived for her to give birth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Love_Lucy

Unbelievable.

Honestly the business strategy of these companies sometimes astounds me. Are they actually serious? "Let's not use YouTube's proven technical back end, let's build our own back end from scratch, so that people have one more standard to follow to watch videos".

Am sure it will be an application that you will have to download, carrying DRM restrictions. Also the show will be interrupted with pop-ups and special advertising features before, after and during the show. Because when they can control the content, they can recoup all those TV advertising ++ dollars they lost with the shift to online media.

This is a waste of venture capital. Deals should be struck with current providers. It's going to take so much time and money retreading everything YouTube has already achieved, primarily being the number one place for people to watch videos. It's like a record company seeing Apple's success with itunes and launching it's own service.

By having it on a service such as YouTube, you already cut a lot of the marketing and advertising the venture would require now. The audience is already there. Work in a simple PayPal transaction system that charges small fees. Maybe make it a monthly subscription fee.

Then throw your entire 60+ year back catalog on to the site. Instead of having those 'I Love Lucy' tapes lying around unused, you'll have so much demand from older viewers, look at the nostalgia generated by some of the old show intros on the Sift. Am sure some would be willing to buy one or two classic episodes. Charge premium for newer shows. The pricing is important, you don't want to make users averse to the purchase, it must be low enough to make it seem worthwhile even if you don't particularly like the show. The purchase must be easy and quick to make, this is is SO important. See Economics of micro transactions.

While that occurs, work with those content providers on a different delivery system. Maybe work with TVEXT to create various 'channels' of your older content. Because today we watch our videos on ipods and the Internet, tomorrow we will be watching them on our Media Center TVs.

But I guess in their heads they want to dictate how you watch their shows, how much you pay for them and where you can watch them. Short term risk profits always cloud the view of long term sustained profits.

I remember a variation of this in an I Love Lucy episode (with Harpo), but I've never seen the original until now. Good stuff!