South Park Episodes Offered Free on Streaming VOD Website

NEW YORK, March 26: Matt
Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, and Comedy Central have launched
Southparkstudios.com, featuring free, streaming full-length episodes and clips
from all 12 seasons of the show.

In the week since South
Park Digital Studios, a joint venture between Parker, Stone and Comedy Central,
opened its beta version of the site to the public, it has received more than 3
million page views, 2 million-plus video plays and more than a million streams
of full-length episodes.

Developed in conjunction
with Schematic, a WWP Digital Company, the website offers all episodes from the
South Park library. New
episodes are posted as soon as possible after they premiere on Comedy Central,
and remain there for seven days. Then these episodes will return to the site
permanently 30 days after their debut. Southparkstudios.com also features
extensive video and behind-the-scenes information from all 12 seasons.
Currently, there are 168 episodes online.

South Park Digital Studios
also worked with 65 Media to create the South Park Avatar Generator, allowing
users to make themselves into a South Park character. To date, more than 35,000 avatars have
been created.

"The South Park phenomenon began as a viral video clip,” said Doug
Herzog, the president of MTV Networks' Entertainment Group. “Now it continues
its digital and creative leadership with the launch of an extensive site
devoted entirely to South Park. Southparkstudios.com
is a true representation of Matt and Trey's vision and is the ultimate online
destination for South Park
fans—allowing them full access to every South Park episode ever created."

“One goal in moving
forward is to make every episode of South Park available worldwide,” added Anne Garefino, the
general manager of South Park Digital Studios. “Currently, full episodes are
not available in the U.K., Australia and a few other foreign territories but
we're not far off from making that happen. We have some contractual issues to
sift through but we're getting there."

Stone and Parker added in
a joint statement, "We got really sick of having to download our own show
illegally all the time so we gave ourselves a legal alternative."

—By Ned Berke