Redheaded Ring of Death: Why a Conan O’Brien XBox Live show would have been a bad idea
After the announcement that Conan was going to TBS word got out that Team CoCo was seriously considering a jump to XBox Live (Deadline.com). While that may sound like a hip and edgy thing to do, it would have been a step backward and likely a complete disaster. Media pundits weighing in on the issue put it into the same context as Revision3’s offer to get Conan on to their network (An open letter to Conan O’Brien). Even though both platforms involve the Internet, the similarities end there. Revision3 would have been the better online bet. XBox Live would have been worse than going to a cable channel that only served 10% of the country.
Contrary to a position taken over at Geekosystem, although XBox Live could offered a theoretically big paycheck, Conan’s not in it for only the money. Otherwise he would have stayed at NBC.
It’s important to understand so called new media that’s just old platforms with better tech versus real new media that embraces how people really function. Revision3 is an open distribution channel. Content on there gets pushed out everywhere from inflight airplane entertainment to illegal downloading torrents. iTunes, YouTube, Revision3.com, they don’t care how you get it. Revision3 is about providing content to wherever their audience might find it. And they find it. When they announced that shows like Diggnation were getting 200,000 plus viewers, some traditional media pundits scoffed at that, including the head of one of Microsoft’s major PR firms. He opined that a show with those numbers wouldn’t last long on cable. He should go take a look at how CNN and CNBC are scoring in the same demos as Diggnation (for extra kicks he should look at the dismal numbers big media firms like his get when they try to do pseudo viral videos). He then should take a look at their respective budgets. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht are the Paranormal Activity of online content.
XBox Live is the opposite of that. It’s a glorified cable box. The purpose of content on XBox Live is to get you to buy XBox’s and pay for subscription services from Microsoft. There’s nothing wrong with that for Microsoft. For content creators it’s not the ideal way to reach a larger audience. Your audience is never going to be greater than the number of people who have access to XBox Live content. Presently that’s about 20 million consoles. It’s all the opposite things of growing online media.
Frustrating that even more is the headache Microsoft has given content creators even when they’ve give them “total creative control”. (Check out James Gunn’s item, “My Painful XBox Experience” JamesGunn.com) Would the Masturbating Panda last long on XBox Live if execs there got nervous about how it affected their brand? If past behavior is any indication the answer is “no”.
All things considered, TBS is probably the best fit for Conan. He’s still a traditional media kind of guy. As delightful as it is to see him on Twitter, he’s nowhere near as engaged in it as someone like Shaquille O’Neill, “First person to touch me gets court side tickets to tonights game.” It’s ego shattering for many celebrities to find out how few people are willing to show up at their beck and call online. It’s not because they’re any less loved. It’s because we consume that content in a totally different manner. XBox Live is still the old model and wouldn’t have given Conan the audience he deserves.
