{"id":2675,"date":"2010-01-21T23:44:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/21\/conan-online\/"},"modified":"2010-01-22T08:38:40","modified_gmt":"2010-01-22T08:38:40","slug":"conan-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/01\/conan-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Conan Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the fun and games over The Tonight Show with a mixture of awe and incredulity. It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise to regular readers that I have a huge amount of respect for Johnny Carson \u2013 in fact the single phrase I pushed as the \u201ctakeaway\u201d from my \u201cHow to interview people\u201d session at Blogworld Expo<\/a> was Watch lots of Carson.<\/em><\/p>\n

Upshot is, popular late night host Conan O\u2019Brien is now leaving The Tonight Show for destinations unknown. While it\u2019s likely that Fox will eventually take him on board, there will be a lot of people (Revision3!) suggesting that he goes online and does the show there.<\/p>\n

\"So, <\/p>\n

If Coco thought his lead in from Jay Leno was hurting him, just wait till he realises that the web has no lead-in beyond the occasional Digg headline (although he might have some<\/em> help there). Do I think he will go online? Probably not. But if he did, then it would <\/p>\n

Talk Shows are traditionally one of the cheaper forms of TV to put in place \u2013 although the hosts can gather in telephone number salaries compared to CSI Scarborough the bottom line is much smaller. But going online means a lot less income\u2026 a lot. Arguably O\u2019Brien and his exec producer have been given their Frak You <\/em>money from NBC (hey my Mum reads this, okay!) so they don;t need to worry about salary, but the running of a Tonight Online show would take some serious commitment to do it to the same level as NBC\u2026 or even better. <\/p>\n

But O\u2019Brien has advantages that few media producers online have. He transcends the web and there is the obvious name and brand recognition that he has \u2013 it\u2019s almost given that any Ad Sales team would be able to cover running costs on any show, even if Hollywood sized wages wouldn\u2019t be on the cards.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d argue that there hasn\u2019t yet been a breakout show from the web \u2013 the closest in the UK has been Ask Me This<\/del> Answer Me This<\/a> (which I should really have remembered) who received a one off radio commission for an \u201cEnd of 2009\u201d show on BBC Radio, or Limmy<\/a> (thanks to @iainmhepburn<\/a> for the nudge) with his BBC Scotland TV Series. O\u2019Brien is in the position where he could<\/em> become the show that makes \u201ca TV show on the Internet\u201d a reality.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s risky. Horribly risky. And the upside for him is far far less than trying to get all the Fox affiliates to stop doing lucrative re-runs and run him head to head to head against Letterman and Leno.<\/p>\n

Much as Coco online would be the most entrepreneurial move to make, I think we\u2019ll continue to look for a new online video hero, and it\u2019ll be someone new to the media mix, not an established star moving to a new field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve been watching the fun and games over The Tonight Show with a mixture of awe and incredulity. It shouldn\u2019t be a surprise to regular readers that I have a huge amount of respect for Johnny Carson \u2013 in fact the single phrase I pushed as the \u201ctakeaway\u201d from my \u201cHow to interview people\u201d session at Blogworld Expo was Watch lots of Carson. Upshot is, popular late night host Conan O\u2019Brien is now leaving The Tonight Show for destinations unknown. While it\u2019s likely that Fox will eventually take him on board, there will be a lot of people (Revision3!) suggesting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[576,52],"tags":[1593,1594,1114,344,1596,1595,79],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mainstream-media","category-web-2point0","tag-conan-obrien","tag-jay-leno","tag-johnny-carson","tag-online","tag-revision3","tag-tonight-show","tag-video"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-H9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}