Amanda Congdon and Old School Media Institutions
If you were anywhere on the web this year you should be well aware of who Amanda Congdon is and the whole fiasco with Rocketboom. A couple of weeks ago there was news that Amanda had signed a deal with ABC News to do a video blog for them, which seems mightily impressive and to be honest, I was very curious to see how it would turn out. I applauded ABC for seeing an opportunity to tackle a new generation and figured there was no wrong that they could do…
Wrong.
I’m not quite sure how to link to the first episode since it is a popup, but here is the site and if you view it this week you should catch it. Before reading any further I suggest you go over to take a look so you can have your own unbiased perspective on things.
But she is awesome.
Many of Amanda’s fans argued that when she left Rocketboom it would tumble because she was the talent. It seems that they were wrong and that Rocketboom has continued on successfully and from what I hear more than a couple people feel that the new host is more talented than Amanda. So that left Amanda to prove that she just wasn’t a Rocketboom wonder and actually had some talent of her own.
Now let us not mistake a geek’s lust for women who talk to them and have cute figures with talent. I will ignore the quality of her acting skills this paragraph (no diversity) and let’s see what happens when an old school media institution (ABC) tries to latch on to the new flow of the web. Besides messing up by putting the show in a popup box and having no comments or trackbacks immediately apparent (uploading video responses does not count), the show is the exact same as Rocketboom.
It’s almost expected for ABC to make the blunders stated above, but I wouldn’t expect a person with the experience of Amanda to allow such things to happen. I guess though if you are dealing with a site that has millions of viewers you have more room for mistakes, but this show doesn’t cater to the people who watch ABC News Primetime with Tom Brokaw (or whoever is on the show, admittedly I have no idea) and so how exactly is this supposed to work out?
If I wanted to keep up with Amanda at ABC News do I have to continuously visit her site and hope that she updates it whenever she pushes out a new show? There is a certain expectation with video blogs and definitely an expectation when a large company like ABC produces a show and I don’t think either party is meeting these expectations.
To ABC: Again, I know it is easy to slap something on your website and push your large amount of traffic to it and call it a success, but being part of the web crowd those things just don’t slide. Unclutter the page, make a RSS feed apparent, at the very least add trackbacks so some discussion and community can form around the show and if you are going to act cool be cool. Faking it is just weak.
Honestly, I would’ve created a new site for this.
To Amanda: Congrats on the gig, but why stick with the whole Rocketboom routine? Maybe the idea was completely your’s in the first place, but it was done on Rocketboom and you are just taking it to another place. Is this supposed to be Amanda Congdon on ABCNews.com or Rocketboom on ABCNews.com? I know you have aspirations of being an actress, but already I’m beginning to put you in the category of Screech and Urkel, personalities that are stuck and have no chance of trying anything new. I don’t wish that same fate on you.
Honestly, I would’ve stayed independent for this.
I don’t think I could sell out because I like to have a certain amount of control over my projects. Even if CTV, CityTV or Global came up to me with a contract, I’d have to turn it down because there’d probably be some kind of stipulation that severely limits my control.
But then again, Brad Butt didn’t have problems working with CTV and retaining his independance so maybe I am just paranoid.
By Kyle Korleski on December 15, 2006 9:54 am
I definately think it needs more time — and community. And I think she knows.
She keeps talking about bringing independent media to the masses so in that sense her partnership with ABC works. There is a lot more she can do with the space and I think she will, once she gets centered. If she couldn’t even bypass the default video player I imagine there’s a lot more she couldn’t bypass as well in terms of format. They hired Amanda Cogdon from Rocketboom so that’s what she’s doing. I’d like to believe she’ll take it and run.
By Justin Ruckman on December 15, 2006 10:15 am
That’s what I am curious to see though Justin, it’s an old school institution which isn’t known for giving new shows time to see if they will improve. How many shows on TV are on for 3-4 weeks and then dropped? I’m not saying she is in the same position, but she might be.
For some reason I can picture her saying “we need this…” and the execs simply telling her to work with it.
By Scrivs on December 15, 2006 12:18 pm
Sorry. I’ve never heard of her or rocketboom. Guess I haven’t been anywhere on the Web this year ;-).
By Roger Johansson on December 15, 2006 1:08 pm
Roger do you even have a site of your own?
By Scrivs on December 15, 2006 2:10 pm
I think she’s lame. I really do. Sue me.
By Montoya on December 16, 2006 3:38 am