What If Conan Said, ‘Bye, NBC. Hello, Internet’? | Hacker News Reader

What If Conan Said, ‘Bye, NBC. Hello, Internet’?

bits.blogs.nytimes.com

21 pointsphyscab21 comments

Then he'd make a tiny fraction of his current income. Isn't that why the NYT wants to go back to charging readers? I'm surprised they don't suggest he'd do the show over Twitter.

Conan != NYT

Think about most of his show, either skits written but a crew of writers, or advertising the latest blockbuster movie with some big star. He might be able to run a monologue online by himself, but I doubt he'd have the cash flow to support a prop/writing staff, or be widely viewed enough to bring on a-list celebs during their PR runs.

I don't think it would work. Conan is a funny guy but almost all his comedy is based on mainstream popular culture punchline. On the Internet you're dealing with an audience who has largely turned away from the mainstream spoon fed world to search out their own interests. He would have to drastically revamp his routine because, chances are, most of that mainstream spoon fed audience is going to watch whatever is on broadcast TV at 11:35. This nicely explains the success of people like Jay Leno and David Letterman who haven't delivered a new joke in the last decade that didn't involve simply updating names/places/event to fit their classic routine of pop culture humor. It's not quite the same as the silent film era stars who couldn't make it in talkies but I don't think it's entirely different either. It's just a different skill set and a big transition to make for someone who's been doing basically the same exact show every night for 15 years.

A lot of what makes comedy work in the first place is cultural capital. Shows like The Simpsons et al. make use of shared cultural experiences to be funny. I'd expect that I would miss most jokes for a long while if I went to another country, even if I spoke the language. I don't think that using cultural references diminishes Conan's humor at all.

However, if making a big transition in writing is necessary to make things work on the web, I can't imagine anyone being better suited than Conan and his team.

So here’s my advice to Mr. O’Brien: After he leaves NBC and spends a few months healing his wounds and pulling the troops back together, he should come back and make the Internet his time slot. He doesn’t need to abandon television — there are still millions of viewers who sit around the living room and tune in at a specific time — but he could take the battle in the direction the audience is clearly migrating: online.

Isn't that exactly what most shows (Tonight Show included) do right now? Broadcast at a specific time to millions of people while offering up clips and other content online (and in many cases, the entire show, the following day)?

For example: Last week, knowing that Conan was going to draw a larger crowd than usual, Letterman uploaded clips of his monologue to their CBS branded YouTube channel before the show aired.

I don't think anything so radical is required. Fox will pick up Conan and give him a show. Fox seems to have a talent for monetizing the "small but devoted audience" shows (e.g. Family Guy, Futurama, just about every Joss Whedon show ever...).

And Arrested Development. That show being cancelled made me hate Americans.

Hey, we all love that show, don't blame us!

I never understood the American fascination with spending an entire decade of one's life playing the same character and saying the same jokes. After two seasons it's time to move on and do something different with your life.

Probably has something to do with getting paid more money the longer you do it and loving the people you work with.

Conan was a writer for "The Simpsons" back in the 1990s. Taking his show to Fox would be sort of a homecoming for him.

Family Guy and Futurama were originally cancelled by Fox and it took years of good ratings by re-running these shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim for Fox to take a second look at them.

So, I don't know if Fox would keep a Conan show long enough to let it flourish. Maybe Conan should get it in writing that Fox can't do what NBC did.

"Good ratings" for Cartoon Network are different than "good ratings for Fox. There's a reason Fox passed up on the Futurama revival (and this is coming from a Futurama loyalist).

I actually laughed out loud, thinking you were serious for a moment :)

I think comedy shows like the late-night shows and SNL are in the same situation as CDs were last decade - it's no longer enough to have one or two jokes (singles) carry the whole show (CD), because we can now acquire those individually.

If Conan went online, he could focus on doing 5-10 funny things a week, cut his budget massively, and have a total of 40-60 minutes of content each week, but have it be good stuff. Because he wouldn't be bubbled into a timeslot, he wouldn't have to "fill" with less-funny stuff.

Casual fans, such as myself, would very rarely bother to look it up and watch it online, but catching a half hour or so after the news might happen a few times a week.

Tom Green did this after MTV cancelled his show.

Tom Green's show is interesting and innovative, and his celebrity interviews are better than any you'll find on a TV talk show. Largely because the celebrities let their guard down in the low-rent facilities.

Conan has a couple big personal obstacles to going online. First, he'd have to lay off a lot of his staff, because an online talk show doesn't require and can't support nearly as many crew members as The Tonight Show.

Second, he'd be taking a big pay cut. If the show did well he might still have a shot at seven figures, but any TV talk show he does would probably pay him at least $15-20 million.

Third, he'd have fewer viewers, which could be a blow to both his ego and his cultural importance (that's not to suggest that either is currently out of whack).

The upside is that Conan is probably one of the best-positioned people in the world to do something like this, and he has the means and support to try it out as an experiment for a few months. At this point in his career, though, he may not be looking to make such a big change.

Adam Carolla started his own podcast as well last March when his radio show was cancelled, and is expanding his podcast to a "network" of podcasts, was #1 podcast of the year on iTunes, etc.

So, yes, a celebrity like Conan O'Brien would definitely get a huge head start in terms of audience but the amount of money going online is surely much much lower than what he'd get from a major traditional broadcast company.

I think the author makes the fundamental mistake of assuming his experiences are normative. Just because he watches television online doesn't mean the majority of people do. It's certainly trending that way, but for now broadband penetration isn't to the point in the US to supplant broadcast TV.

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