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Conan O'Brian

 
February 21, 2011
 

Conan's budding empire

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I don't watch a ton of late night television these days, but I love the rare occasion when I am able to catch some Conan (or Jimmy Fallon for that matter). Throughout the years, Conan has somehow managed to maintain a freshness to his show that is hard to pin down. In any case, I was intrigued by a recent Fortune article describing Conan's rise to the top of a digital empire after The Tonight Show debacle. What started out as a quest to be the host of The Tonight Show has ended in him charting a new path for the entertainment industry; one that bridges multiple media and has far-reaching implications for media distribution in a new age:

Weeks before Conan made its debut on TBS, O'Brien gave a presentation to top publicists in his new studio on the Warner Bros. lot. He and his digital staff explained that a guest's appearance on Conan was no longer just about being on air for 10 minutes; it was a connection to O'Brien's full social network of millions of fans -- a connection that could last for days or even months. "The same goes for their charities and pet projects," says Wooden. "We're ramping up our efforts to be producing digitally exclusive content with either guests on the show or people who can't appear because of scheduling conflicts."

How is he able to do this? The numbers from the Fortune infographic above tell the story: he's killing it across the board in new media. He has been since the first tweet (he set the world record for most follows in a day according to the article). 

What's most interesting to me is that all of this couldn't have happened much sooner than the time it did. Had Conan assumed the reins a few years earlier and the transition from Leno had failed (as it did) he would have had little recourse. He'd have been off the air and out of a show most likely. A modern-day Arsenio Hall.

But because of all of these alternative delivery channels and media, Conan was able to linger, rally his base and re-emerge as a new type of media icon for a new age of media consumption:

Like millions of other Americans, Conan O'Brien's life has been disrupted by the digital world, and he's been forced to reinvent himself. YouTube, TiVo (TIVO), Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have greatly diminished the cultural relevance of The Tonight Show, whose overall audience has shrunk 44%, from 5.6 million a night to 3.9 million, over the past five years, and whose key 18- to-49 demographic has shrunk from 2.4 million to 1.4 million during that time. O'Brien had worked his whole professional life with one goal in mind, to get to host The Tonight Show, and he got there, but he was born 10 years too late for it to really matter. Accidentally, however, he's learned how to innovate and make the Conan brand mean even more than The Tonight Show brand to a young, passionate, and growing audience.

Innovation in action.

Filed under  //   Coco   Conan O'Brian   Facebook   I'm with Coco   Twitter  

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January 11, 2010
 

The Death of "Late Night"

Hutch Carpenter, VP for Insights as Spigit, dug up this gem from Rashmi Sinha, CEO of SlideShare. In Rashmi's post "Is it time to reimagine your product/service?" she notes:

The problem with being the vintage of your launch year is that the domain gets reimagined. You get left behind even if you are doing everything right. This is the classic problem that so many companies face – they are innovative when they launch. They continue on the path they launch with, which they get traction with initially. At a certain point, they are executing so well, that they get left behind. Their success contains the seeds of their becoming obsolete

This is a great insight I've seen on display in many products throughout my career. Products, that once addressed a glaring value denial gradually fell out of touch with the direction their market was moving. By the time they realized the ground had moved beneath them, it was often too late. With this in mind, I found Jimmy Fallon's comments to NY Mag about the brouhaha surrounding the late night lineup at NBC to be particularly insightful:
The late-shifting at NBC may send Jay Leno back to 11:35 and push Conan to midnight (or another network) but at least Jimmy Fallon isn't [upset] about doing his show a half hour later. "I'll do my show at 3 in the morning," Fallon told New York Times reporter Bill Carter during a talk at the Times' Arts & Leisure Weekend last night. "I'm just happy I have a job." Fallon pointed out that his younger, DVR-loving audience doesn't watch him play beer pong with Betty White in real time anyway. "Time doesn't really matter to me," he said. "We're in a different age. Time is like... I don't even know what time 'Jersey Shore' is on. It doesn't matter - I'll see it." 

I love that comment about Jersey Shore, btw. In any case, as this drama unfolds, NBC, Conan and Jay are the incumbents with years of labor and accomplishments on the line. Fallon's a startup playing with house money. He's like a kid with a dream job he fully expects to lose at any moment but is thrilled to have it while it lasts. He's the guy who has nothing to lose. I love that mentality.

More importantly, he represents a younger generation and carries with him a different perspective on media consumption that is native to that generation. Not that Conan and Jay aren't acutely aware of DVR's impact on their viewership, but they and NBC and their affiliates remain fixated on a time-based structure that is in the process of being disrupted. From a near-term business standpoint, it makes perfect sense and I would be loathe to suggest a different tactic to preseve their revenue stream. 

However, this is exactly the point that Rashmi is making: it's hard to innovate when you have such a reason for stasis baked into your business model. NBC's concerns feel more like "but that's the way it works best". What they aren't paying enough attention to is the fact that the need to conform to some artificial time structure is disappearing. Already, "prime time" and "late night" are radically decoupled from their monikers. With Hulu, DVR, and any number of other technologies, "late night" is whenever consumers want it to be. Hence Fallon's point. The key to their success is content.If the content isn't good, it won't be on consumers' screens . . . at any time of the day. And that's where NBC should be focusing its time and efforts. Content. 

Maybe Jay's show isn't all that great and maybe it is killing the affiliate lead-in. But affiliates need to consider that in a few years the concept of a "lead-in" will be utterly archaic. When consumers everywhere are making their own TV playlist, there won't ever be a lead-in. Ever. If you don't have compelling content, you won't be seen by anyone. Affiliates take careful note of this point. Jay's weak show isn't the cause of your struggles. It's a canary in the mine.

Updated (1/12/2009)
 After posting this, the NY Times had a great writeup on the topic. Some remarks that speak to the Rashmi's point and my additional commentary (juicy stuff in bold):
Not since New Coke has a storied brand been so thoroughly maimed. “The Tonight Show,” once a gilded entertainment franchise, is now just one more broken toy in the mistake pile. “You have the combination of expired content, in terms of current public taste, appearing at the wrong time on a medium that has lost its salience, by whatever standards you use,” said Paul Levinson, professor of communication at Fordham University.

The message to the younger talent is one thing — wait for a turn that may never come or may be taken back at any second — but the message to younger audiences is even clearer: a legacy industry will default to legacy assets and ride them down to the bitter end.The network model explains why Ted Koppel is favored over younger talent to serve as interlocutor on “This Week” and why, when networks make what they see as a risky move — hey, let’s put a woman in the anchor chair — it will be someone like Katie Couric or Diane Sawyer, both of whom have been on television for decades.

That's it exactly.

 

Filed under  //   Conan O'Brian   DVR   Hulu   Jay Leno   Jimmy Fallon   Late Night   NBC   innovation   media   strategy  

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