Has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

For the uninitiated, The Muppet Show was a television show in the seventies that copied the old style of theatrical variety shows. The show was populated with small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, who gets pushed into a big budget number with added realism with the sideways glances to the edge of the stage. Albeit in the stage manager's office controlling Viking singing pigs or listening to the heckling of the two old men in the box. This environment, created by Jim Henson and financed by Lew Grade is mainly populated by actors and actresses lovingly recreated in natural and man-made fibres apart from the celebrities.

The video above shows part one (of three) for the first episode of the first season. Within two minutes, we are introduced to Mahna Mahna - you could say it is a version of Psy's Gangham Style. It is sung mainly by a Muppet who could be wearing sunglasses or has really dark eyes singing lyrics that don't make much sense to the uninitiated but it is quite catchy. Does that remind you of anything?

On the flip-side, there seems to be no need to describe YouTube, but I will. It is a collection of videos added to by the public, "but was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal" (Wikipedia 2013). These videos attract "more than 1 billion unique users who watch over 4 billion hours of video each month whilst 72 hours of video are uploaded each minute" (YouTube 2013). But remind yourself of what videos are on YouTube - small musical numbers, some comedy routines, maybe a headliner celebrity, small furry animals. Here is one of the videos you might find readily on YouTube:

Each media outlet, be it through television (120 episodes of the original Muppet Show series - Wikipedia 2013) or through the Internet (in 2011, it had more than 1 trillion views - YouTube 2013) has its similarities and its differences. But, if you are bored on a Friday afternoon before you go home from work and watch a cute kitten or watch a sheep baa, it is possibly because the kids in the seventies were brought up on furry animal sketches. Enjoy this Muppet song brought to you by the wonders of YouTube and spot the celebrity plug.

So can you answer my question, has YouTube replaced The Muppet Show?

The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. The Muppet Show - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Muppet_Show. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2013. YouTube - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube. [Accessed 06 June 2013].

Statistics - YouTube . 2013. Statistics - YouTube . [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en-GB/statistics.html. [Accessed 06 June 2013].