Everywhere with Coco
When his Tonight Show gig was falling apart, I became one of those millions who started to watch Conan O’Brien. I had never been much of a fan, and I didn’t like his Tonight Show gig at all in the first episode or two that I watched after its debut. But that final week or two had me, and a lot of people, evaluating. As I noted at the time, angry = funny.
As this extremely interesting piece from Fortune points out, O’Brien was the beneficiary of very new tools of his trade: Twitter and Facebook, among others. Purely by luck, he was able to surf the sort of social-media tidal wave that swamped Hosni Mubarak last week. Everywhere we look, whether it’s on shirtless Congressmen on Craigslist or hapless television executives, the impact of new media has just started to be felt. These are the early days, and we haven’t figured out anywhere near what we think we have. Welcome to Gutenberg 2.0.
February 14th, 2011 at 2:11 pm
So, is the medium the message this time, or is it the content?
February 14th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
Ah, good reference.
In this case, the medium is most definitely the message. Old media is one-directional: from the source to the recipient. New media is multi-directional. Which is why O’Brien is now adjusting his material to incorporate new content provided by others.