Amanda Congdon, best known as the original host of Rocketboom, has been let go by ABCNews.com.
ABCNews.com said in a statement:
“It’s been a great year with Amanda — a great experiment for both of us. We thank her for her many contributions and know that she’s about to embark on new endeavors and expect there will be times in the future that we can again work together.”
During her time at ABCNews.com Congdon did a number of projects, including “Amanda Across America,” which as the name suggests was a traveling video blog.
As much as we wish Amanda the very best in her future endeavors, her failure to move from online celebrity to mainstream media company successfully does bring into question the ability of online stars to go mainstream. I’m not quite sure that I’d agree with Fark’s focus on the news, but there will be those who miss seeing Congdon video blogging regularly.
(Media Bistro via Fark)
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She’s hot - hire her!
Cuter and more on top of it in terms on online trends than anybody else they have at ABC - they should have figured out a better role for her and really thought out a better online strategy to sell the personality. Instead we get more Elizabeth Hasselbeck and the View… and more Bawbawa.
It takes more than a rack to be accepted by the mainstreem. Lots of social media folks would have little to no audience outside of the niche they can “somehow” develop online.
Commenter 1:
maybe we should ask Michael to hire her for a TC video podcast
@4. Duncan seems to have a crush on her, make sure your wife doesn’t read this post!
Internet audiences are watching less TV. I wonder if they were expecting she’d bring some over or just simply appeal to existing TV viewers. Is this evidence that internet celebs can’t move to mainstream or that mainstream is failing to keep up with the times? Perhaps a little of both. It was a good experiment.
How much for her? we can make donations.
I guess I missed the part about her being an online “star” in the first place.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzz
AAA was before she joined ABC news. Sorry Duncan but one video blogger making the jump and leaving does not a panic make.
She has work for HBO coming up per her appearance on Mike and Juliet last week. And her advertising work is where I expect her to really become big online - look at dupont and amex.
As I wrote in my analysis - I also believe ABC wasn’t ready for her from a technology perspective either.
New and old media: Two different worlds. Period.
I’ll continue focusing my efforts in the new media space and on interesting Internet projects.
Allen
I didn’t say it was a panic, I simply noted that internet celebrities can’t always make the move into MSM…Amanda being an example of someone most said would go far but didn’t.
Normally, I just want you to cheerlead startups - but this is a story theme that you should stick with…. real talent tends toward the TV.
Didn’t we prove that online celebrity doesn’t translate to guaranteed success eons ago with Cindy Margolis, “the most downloaded woman on the Internet?” Remember that God-awful show she had late-night?
Anyway, it’s not like anyone needed that proven. Is every locally successful garage band on MTV? I love TC’s ability to point out the obvious. I consider it a signature of this site.
This is interesting …. it can also mean that TV is dead and she did not prosper because … who can prosper in a cemetery? A while back I was reading some stats about TV viewing: It is still increasing but at an alarming slower rate. And if it continues, it is expected that TV viewing will start declining all together between 5 to 7 years. I need to find the report again. If I find it i will post the source.
In the same vein as the other comments, it’s important to note that Amanda’s dismissal may not be her failure, but rather ABCs.
It’s interesting that we still discuss the notion of “main stream”. Rather I would assert that content delivery has has segmented itself among the various platforms along quality lines. High quality is on TV. Lower quality is on the internet (youtube, vlogging). Perhaps Amanda isn’t right for the “high quality” network programming, but may be great in the vlogging medium. Perhaps this incident just reinforces these dynamics.
Who knows.
I think that Amanda just left too soon. 99% of America just did not know her when she left Rocketboom, so her background provided zero value. It was as if she was a total newbie (or noob, as the case may be.)
Also, her quirky sense of humor / sarcasm just doesn’t translate well to my 47″ HDTV. For some reason it works great on my 14″ laptop and 2″ Ipod. Not sure why.
Any word on where Amanda will land? Celebrities have to constantly re-invent themselves, so this move is not surprising if you have been keeping up with her vlogging.
Maybe this will enable her to focus more on new media and become a huge hit online once again.
she can always crash with me while she lands her next gig
Personally I just think it means her 15 minutes of fame is up.
Duncan - just because someone leaves a firm, does not mean their career is over. I am the last one to defend Amanda, but she has said she has other things going on as well. I could see if she was/is out of the market 6-9 months, then calling her (or anyone else similar sit.) dead, but not even one day is a bit much.
What would people have thought about your new co-editor Erick if he was out of work for a day? Hope that helps illustrate my point.
with a rack like that, she deserves at least 30 minutes of fame, and there’s always zivity as a way to “monetize the rack” so to speak….
Why do some think that a traditional TV job is “graduating” from online video? Like online video is somehow the bush leagues? Let’s check out how pathetically some “big” stars have crashed in online shows instead.
The two mediums are different. Amanda is internet video, not Old Media. She’ll be back.
I heard that Robert Scoble signed a deal with NBC to do short video segments on technology - he’s easily more engaging than Amanda.
LOL @21 - Zivity - there is a startup that will be gone quicker than you can run to the nearest peep show.
Scoble is more engaging than Amanda?! I don’t think so. She’s cuter too. I like Amanda and look forward to her popping up somewhere soon.
She can come over and do some private “hosting” for me at the estate.
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
I’m not a Congdon fan but I do see that she worked well online in a way that wouldn’t necessarily translate to tv.
It would seem like a logical move to her but the reality is that many of these Internet stars work well online and won’t make it on tv. And that’s their strength cause a lot of tv talent couldn’t make it online separate from a major tv brand.
On the talent side it really would be hard to settle for web dollars when tv bucks are calling. That’s real money versus a scheme and a dream. So I understand her move but it was a tactic not a strategy.
look, the ascendancy is this.
1. Bedroom
2. Internet
3. TV
4. Rehab
TV is NOT dead because the prize of being on the interweb is that you get onto TV. When a broadcaster turns around one day and says, you know this star is so big we are going to put him onto the web then the model has changed.
Until then this poor girl is over, but i am sure more of you boggers still want to get on tv or in a newspaper
It’s a simple lesson - just because horny geekboys will drive up your viewer numbers online, doesn’t mean they will when you go mainstream.
Perhaps Amanda didn’t sleep with as many people as Katie Couric to get to the top. You’d have to ask Michael Clemente how that went. Amanda is an extremely cutting edge person….a lot brighter than Katie any day of the week or whoever else we seem to have representing the female population. Perhaps she just didn’t put out which Klein suggests in his new book on Katie is just how it happened to that lil’ “sweet heart.” Amanda will jump right back to something bigger and better!
Proves again that the means by which the content is delivered is more important than the content itself. Moving her to MSM won’t make me bookmark new sites or even buy a regular TV again. You born on the net, you’ll die on the net.
I see how the still shot of her was perfectly chosen to make her look like a blow-up doll. Says a lot about what she was truly appreciated for. Men are gross.
Never confuse being a big fish in small pond, with swimming with the sharks.
Maybe we could hire her for bikinizero.com ha.
Well once Mike Arrington and his new best friend Loic Le Meur start their video channels on Joost we will be able to see if they can do any better than Amanda. Personally I know who I would rather watch both visually and factually.
Damn she is hot.
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Nice melons, blond, leggy, great smile and she failed??? This can’t be happening in America!
I have absolutely no idea who this chick is…You say she was somewhat “famous” at some point? Well she has got a nice rack, I’m sure she will have no problem landing some other gig soon. I bet she is really annoying to listen to though. Just a hunch. It is a nice rack though.
I hear that she is getting a job working for MS.
http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com
Maybe she will be a hit at the Playboy Channel. She has the assets!
She has as much talent as Katie Couric , and even more perkiness. Hire her! She’s so pretty!!
dam…I’m gonna miss that nice rack of hers
Sorry, did she speak during her broadcasts ??
Duncan,
Maybe there would not be so many comments here about Amanda’s breasts if you had not linked to a totally useless string of comments at Fark about her breasts. Why start the conversation with a link like that? I don’t get it.
Penelope
Chris Crocker heY! Are you reading this?
~ X anemi
Who cares? Karma’s a bitch. Nothing new. She’s just another cookie cutter tech girl like iJustine that has no talent other than being attractive and interested in tech. Yawn.
She was a no-talent, not even that attractive, bimbo. She still is. Good riddance. ABC should hire a woman with some talent…
Looks to me like ABC made a half-assed attempt at trying to capitalize on the hipness of the Internet by luring away one of the Internet’s hippest stars of the moment. Once again, no surprise that there’s not one original idea among TV executives, so they lazily came to the web and stole the first thing they heard was cool. And as usual, they ruin everything they touch.
Nearly every national and local TV news outlet, newspaper and news radio station is copy-catting the Internet by souping up their websites, adding blogs and podcasts, and prodding their on-air talent into posting stuff online. But it’s forced, contrived and clumsy. It lacks spontenaity and creative content. No one gives a rat’s ass what Cindy the local morning news anchor had for lunch, or how her trip to the mall went.
Here’s hoping the web creates some more new stars…and that TV stays away from them.
Amanda Congdon is lame, has always been lame and will always be lame. She had next to zero talent, an annoying voice, atrocious delivery and horrible timing. If it wasn’t for her pretty face and fantastic breasts, no one would have even watched her. For instance, put a funny, but not nearly as attractive woman in her place. Do you think it would have had the same viewership? I doubt it.
I watched several of the original Rocketboom shows, could relate to Amanda farting around NYC interviewing artists, geeks, creative folks, with a pinch of tech news and web humor thrown in, maybe because I’m close to her age, artistic, geeky, and lived briefly in NY myself.
IMO “Unboomed” was a mistake at a critical time, requiring registration to comment, nobody takes Blogger.com seriously. Could give a rat’s ass about ABC either. I see she has a Wordpress now: http://amandacongdon.com/blog/ She would be more successful if she focused on writing, she has good ideas and a unique perspective.
Problem with video, you can’t easily scan through it or filter it. I can listen to IDM or maybe a focused podcast in the background, but listening to video while working on other things is not worth it.