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Making the Jump From Web To TV 67

Posted by kdawson from the cewebrities dept.
PreacherTom writes, "No stranger to the tech-savvy, video bloggers are the next phenomenon to go from online to the mainstream. For example, Internet celebrity Amanda Congdon just finished broadcasting her cross-country relocation from New York to L.A. on the Web. The former host of Rocketboom, one of the most popular of the video blogs, with roughly 211,000 daily viewers, has a new gig as a contributor for ABC. She's not alone. In fact, major movie and TV studios are increasingly looking to the Web for new talent for both on- and offline projects."
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Making the Jump From Web To TV More

Making the Jump From Web To TV

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  • There's another way (Score:4, Funny)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:36PM (#16844434) Homepage
    There's another way to make the jump from web to TV. I think Dateline NBC has been running shows on it. [msn.com]
    • I cant wait till the host of that show gets stabbed or shot on air. Its only a matter of time.
      • I cant wait till the host of that show gets stabbed or shot on air. Its only a matter of time.

        I thought the same thing about that show "Cheaters", and damn if Joey Greco didn't get stabbed in the gut within a month.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Chineseyes ( 691744 )
        Although I hate the way the host tries to question people about why they decided to come and have sex with a 12 yr old because it's pretty pointless I actually believe it is one of the few programs that actually does a good public service fear of public humiliation will definitely deter some of the potential pedophiles out there, not all, but I'm sure a few will think twice before they try picking up some 12 yr old on the internet.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bersl2 ( 689221 )
        I think it would be hilarious if somebody posed as a pedophile simply to get this guy to show up.

        Maybe a "Surprise, douchebag!", maybe even a camera crew too.

        Seriously, stigmatizing people with such deviant behavior does not make the behavior go away; it simply drives them farther to the margin. If you're going to single out individuals, you're an ass for not giving them an option to seek help in place of humiliating them---yes, that's blackmail, but if you insist on fighting what you perceive as a wrong wi
  • Yes! It's my chance to become famous! After all, everyone wants to watch a geek sitting in front of a computer writing code. Man, now THAT's entertainment!

  • Who? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:42PM (#16844522) Homepage Journal
    Raise your hand if you haven't heard of Amanda Congdon until now. If she's been seen by 211K people, I guess I'm not one of them. 211K people is a small # of tv viewers, and even smaller segment of web surfers. I think more people would recognize the Star Wars Kid, or that Numa Numa dork. Or, I could be completely wrong.

    "Internet celebrity", uh, yeah... Just what we need, more Paris Hiltons and people who are famous for something trivial, or even nothing.

    All I know is I wish I could view youtube clips on my TV without any file conversion(making it look worse), or hooking up my ipod, etc. I watch YouTube clips 100 times more often than Comcast's skimpy "On Demand" programming. I wonder if some day people will say "watch youtube" instead of "Watch tv".
    • ... to see if I raise my hand.
    • No really, it was a bid deal when she left Rocketboom, which itself was a big thing in vodcasts.

      Then again I have a PSP and Rocketboom was one of the first vodcasts to have a PSP version one could download directly using the PSP's browser. Nowadays with the RSS and the /VIDEO folder that isn't picky about video without the sony atom in the header, one can just subscribe to the iPod version.

    • All I know is I wish I could view youtube clips on my TV without any file conversion(making it look worse), or hooking up my ipod, etc.

      I'm not sure I understand. If you use component or DVI, then open YouTube, there's no file conversion.

      Or do you download the .flv? You can play them directly in WMP if you like.

      1. Download FLVSplitter [sourceforge.net].
      2. Put flvsplitter.ax in \Windows\System32.
      3. Run regsvr32 flvsplitter.ax
      4. Associate .flv with WMP.

    • How does 211k viewers compare to the older tech Jennicam site at its height?
    • I recently discovered that with Xbox Media Center (http://xboxmediacenter.de) I can do just this. There are certainly downsides -- the browsing interface isn't as flexible as with a web browser, and searching kind of blows because you have to type in your search terms with your remote control via an on-screen keyboard. But it is YouTube on your TV. I was surprised at how decent it looked.

    • I must be the only person who found Amanda via Ze, rather than the other way around.

    • Have your very own Amanda! (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Here you go [huffingtonpost.com], thwackers!

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by DustCollector ( 903185 )
      (Keeping hand down) Amanda Congdon preceded youTube. She can be considered the co-founder and Mother of the vlog... the other founder and Father being her estranged business partner Andrew Baron. I learned about RocketBoom from Scoble's blog (I expect more slashdotters are familiar with him) back in late 2004.

      Rocketboom was a way cool and quirky 3 minute daily show. As I understand it, Amanda didn't get paid much doing the show, and was a struggling actress. ...very different from the heiress Paris Hilton.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ncc74656 ( 45571 ) *
      All I know is I wish I could view youtube clips on my TV without any file conversion

      1. Download video from YouTube (KeepVid [keepvid.com] will give you the download link).
      2. Connect TV to your Linux box.
      3. mplayer -fs foo.flv
      4. ...
      5. Profit!
  • The beauty of podcasts is that I can listen to them in my car - videocasts demand my full attention. It's great to be able to keep up with the latest Java news [javaposse.com] while sitting in traffic; makes that time feel less wasted. This interview [blogs.com] wasn't too bad neither.

  • Non-representative sample (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @04:48PM (#16844604) Homepage
    "Amanda Congdon"

    I asked the twenty people around me if they'd ever heard of this person. No one has.

    I went to her site. A lot of bandwidth to tell you that she's famous and will be on TV soon. She points you to her own entry on Wikipedia (which looks suspiciously like her web site). The web site says that she's famous and will be on TV soon.

    I suspect one of the editors of /. just met her and is smitten with her. Now he can call and say "gee, I hope we didn't [nervous laugh] slashdot your site [more nervous laughter]"

    • she really is famous in the video blog set. I think Rocketboom was the #1 videoblog on iTunes and other places that rate videocats/vodcasts in part thanks to her.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      I suspect one of the editors of /. just met her and is smitten with her. Now he can call and say "gee, I hope we didn't [nervous laugh] slashdot your site [more nervous laughter]"

      To be fair, it's BusinessWeek.com making the assertion that she's the "latest 'cewebrity'" - complete with the, uh, clever "cewebrity" joke. Slashdot is just reporting on BusinessWeek.com's story.

      Although, based on the article over at BusinessWeek.com, simply replacing "/." with "BusinessWeek.com" provides a likely true statem

  • ...because until now, I've never heard of these people. And even when I did, I didn't give a rats arse...
  • Never heard of her. Checked her out on GIS.

    /fap fap fap

  • SNL has done it (Score:3, Interesting)

    by businessnerd ( 1009815 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @05:02PM (#16844822)
    This isn't exactly new. SNL recruited one of it's latest cast members from the internet, Andy Samberg (spelling?). He's the shaggy haired one that wrote the "Chronic-cles of Narnia" skit. I hadn't heard of him before, and I definitely have not heard of this lady, but it does prove that the internet can be useful as a place to audition your skills. You can direct casting directors to your web site for a more robust showing of your skills.
    • I think you've got it backwards. That skit ("Lazy Sunday [wikipedia.org]") was originally made by Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg for SNL. After it aired it became an online hit. In other words, Samberg was an SNL "featured player" already when he made "Lazy Sunday".
      • Actually I've got it correct. Yes "Lazy Sunday" was made by Samberg and Parnell after they were already part of the SNL cast and the skit was originally written for and broadcast on SNL. However, Samberg was "discovered" by Lorne Micheals from his internet short films and parodies.

        From the SNL castmember bio:

        A native of Berkley, Calif., Samberg was one of three LA-based writer-performer-filmmakers (all childhood friends) dubbed "The Lonely Island" whose short films were showcased on the popular "untel

  • Ze Frank is the bomb!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by irritating environme ( 529534 ) on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @05:06PM (#16844872)
    Why isn't Ze Frank being picked up? I'm surprised the Daily Show doesn't show his stuff.

  • Eh? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fyngyrz ( 762201 ) * on Tuesday November 14, 2006 @05:23PM (#16845146) Homepage Journal
    Making the Jump From Web To TV

    Ew. I mean, why "jump" backwards?

    TV (I'm not talking about the art of making movies here, I'm talking about television programming) is 99.99% meaningless mindsturbation. Of all the technologies humankind has come up with, surely television is the one that has almost completely failed to reach the potential it offered.

    The web, on the other hand, is able to actually be endlessly engaging and at least does contain enormous amounts of worthwhile content available at any hour of the day if you simply seek it out. We can interact, as we do here, we can study endless hours, we can create content for others to study, we can visit other places and societies, we can search out reviews and counter-opinions. The web strongly defies the pressure from commercial entities to reduce it to its least common denominator.

    Television... that is not the case. Television, as near as I can tell, is constantly reaching for the least common denominator, and what's more, getting there without any trouble at all. Faux News. Lost. Survivor. Infomercials. Religious broadcasts. Medium and Psychic Detectives. Blind Date. TV is like a sewer of the mind; all decayed, toxic matter, nothing suitable for human consumption.

    Honestly, the most valuable thing I've seen on television in the last few months was an HGTV show that gave tips on how to go about room renovation. The only worthwhile news show on the box is the bloody daily show, and "science" on television seems to simply mean Yet Another UFO Show For Rubes.

    Jump from the web to TV? No, I think the correct phrase might be "Fall from the web to TV", or "Slip from the web to TV", or even "Television claims another victim."

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GiMP ( 10923 )
      You're right, the next big thing (and its happening already) is internet television, already I'm watching Amazon's Fishbowl with Bill Maher [amazon.com], and downloading television shows on iTunes. ABC and FOX are putting their shows online for free, while other channels are putting promo episodes online. Sony's Musicbox replaces the now-defunct MTV, and YouTube has more than replaced public television.

      Now, if only international copyright laws and/or paranoia would be cleared up enough that I wouldn't need to use prox
  • a better story would have been if that monkey that stuck his finger up his but, smelled it and fell out a tree got a movie gig. All Hail the Chimp!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Ana10g ( 966013 )
      a better story would have been if that monkey that stuck his finger up his but, smelled it and fell out a tree got a movie gig. All Hail the Chimp!

      George Lucas?
  • Eh. Talented people use tools available to them to develop a reputation and generate publicity. This type of thing predated blogs, and the web in fact.
  • What is this new "Television" everybody is talking about? Could this be the tube that I threw away 2 years ago?
  • I'd really like to see these guys taking some money for the effort. But after ep. 12, I don't know... Even if Jeremy agrees, and Kyle finds some other TV executives, they still have to deal with FPS Doug first. I suppose Jeremy could try a micro combo right before Doug fires that nintendo pistol, though.
  • You know what annoys me? That people can't accept that something being on the web is just fine. That it's only legitimate if it gets turned into a book or goes to TV.

    I think it's a generational thing. Lots of young people are now tuned out of TV, tuned out of newspapers. Their default space is online - chatting via MSN, reading myspace, blogs, youtube. TV is something they switch to when there's something they really want to see.

    • You know what annoys me? That people can't accept that something being on the web is just fine. That it's only legitimate if it gets turned into a book or goes to TV.

      Why does it annoy you that the web-successful are seeking an audience through a bigger screen size? Say, you don't suffer screen envy, do you?

      I think it's a generational thing.

      It's a money thing. A revenue thing. The profit motive gets diluted on the internet, so if you want to add some digits to your paycheck, you must seek the delivery chan

  • with all of this fanfair recently with YouTube and stuff, I thought it was going the other way...
  • I only started watching Rocketboom more recently.

    I think Joanne Colan is fantastic!

    Must watch more Rocketboom...

  • I believe that the minute a major network gets their hands on new talent, especially from the likes of YouTube or other vlogging community, it could very well end up in the removal of the elements that made the individual popular in the first place. Since their first priority is revenue, I'm convinced that they're likely to take whatever they get, and dumb it down to appeal to the widest possible audience. Therein lies the charm of YouTube et al. If you're not popular on YouTube, it's not YouTube's problem.

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