“Sneak peek annoys alphabet” headlines Variety, referring to a one-minute rough cut of a sex scene from Desperate Housewives posted on YouTube. But this one has all the earmarks of “hey, let’s use YouTube to build some grassroots buzz.”

Yahoo! News reported Friday that the clip was still available, but as of this morning it appears to have been removed. You can see the key line (“I don’t do that, I’m a Republican”) in this official promo clip.

Maybe it really wasn’t a contrived leak. It’s not as if Desperate Housewives needs YouTube buzz to build its ratings. But the general notion of YouTube as buzz-builder? I dunno … is it just me, or is it starting to feel like it’s jumping the shark already?

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 3rd, 2006 at 8:30 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Marketing Stuff.