From Rocketboom to ABC
Video blogger Amanda Congdon is the latest "cewebrity" to jump to mainstream media; an industry is forming to help others follow her lead — Internet celebrity Amanda Congdon just finished broadcasting her cross-country relocation from New York to L.A. on the World Wide Web.
Context & Ripple Effects
Congdon's July departure from Rocketboom had already turned a web-video staffing change into a widely watched Rocketboom split. Her move into a network role makes that rupture less about one show and more about where recognizable online hosts can take their audiences and reputations.
The June Vloggercon gathering framed video blogging as participatory media rather than a conventional broadcast pipeline. Congdon's ABC and HBO deals give the emerging support industry a concrete commercial case for helping online personalities cross into established entertainment companies.
First-order effects
- ABC gains Amanda Congdon as a web-born on-air talent, while Congdon shifts her work from an independent video-blog identity into a mainstream-media relationship.
- Managers, producers, and other intermediaries serving online personalities have a visible example to offer creators seeking network and studio deals.
Second-order effects
- Rocketboom must demonstrate that its audience and advertising business can endure independently of the host whose departure defined its 2006 public dispute.
- Mainstream outlets seeking online-video credibility gain an incentive to recruit creators with established web followings rather than build every personality internally.
Third-order effects
- If similar deals proliferate, video blogs become a talent-discovery layer for television and studios, separating creator identity from the independent channels that first built it.
- The value in online video shifts toward the intermediaries that package audience, personality, and distribution for established media buyers.
The trend: Online video is becoming a talent pipeline for mainstream media, with independent creators and their intermediaries converting web attention into network and studio opportunities.