Techdirt. Stories filed under "conan o'brien"

Life Imitates Conan O'Brien As Samsung 'Opens Apple Store'

Mike Masnick — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:01:45 PDT

Just a few weeks ago, Conan O'Brien did a satire video about the Samsung/Apple lawsuit, in which someone pretending to be a Samsung VP "defended" the company against charges of copying Apple, but everything he did, obviously, made it look like Samsung was copying Apple: In that, there's an amusing part, where the "VP" says "Don't believe me? Then come to our retail stores where you can talk more about our products with a 'Samsung Smart Guy.'" Truth, it seems, often matches fiction. Down in Australia, Samsung has now opened its own retail store that bears such an uncanny resemblance to the design of Apple's stores that the always-funny John Paczkowski brilliantly titled his article about it: Samsung Opens New Apple Store in Australia. Can you tell which picture was from the Conan O'Brien video and which actually came from this store?

Oh, did we mention that the Samsung store is... one block away from an Apple store? And, sounding almost exactly like the faux Apple VP in the O'Brien video, an actual Samsung VP told a reporter that Apple "didn't even come into the equation" when planning the store.

I'm firmly of the belief that the whole legal fight between the two companies is silly, and that they should just compete out in the market, but you have to admit that the resemblance here is a bit uncanny.

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Same Talking, Different Heads: How Not To Localize News

Mike Masnick — Fri, 4 Nov 2011 12:23:42 PDT

If you haven't seen this short clip of a bunch of local TV newscasters all saying the exact same line about Conan O'Brien's officiating a same-sex marriage on stage in New York City during a show this week, it's really worth watching just for the mind-numbingly bizarre reaction you have to seeing so many newscasters all repeat the exact line: "Conan O'Brien may be about to push the envelope on late night television." Or, as O'Brien notes, watch as they each put "their own spin" on the news: Honestly, it's hard not to watch that and think that all of the newscasters didn't receive the identical script. While the phrase is a common one, it's not that common that it would lead so many newscasters to all use the identical phrasing. It's possible these are all news affiliates from a single company, who were sent a basic script -- but, once again, this seems to highlight the growing irrelevance/ridiculousness of TV news these days. If you're just going to have 50 different newscasters all read the identical script, why not just have a single newscaster do it, and air it directly on all those other stations.

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Conan O'Brien Has The Inside Scoop On More Netflix Changes

Zachary Knight — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 19:39:00 PDT

If you have been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you are probably not aware that Netflix dramatically increased its prices, separated its streaming and DVD by mail services and then branched the two services into two different companies. You have also probably missed Netflix CEO Reed Hastings' apology and explanation of the debacle. In case you fit this bill, here is the video:

You probably thought that was the end of it.

Well, Susannah from Team CoCo wrote in to tell us that Netflix has even more up its red sleeve to make our movie viewing experience even better.

Honestly, I think having Paul Hogan come over to hang out is quite the deal for only $1.49 a month.

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Nice To See How Content Creators Have More Power Over Middlemen

Mike Masnick — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:58:04 PST

We've talked a lot about how the role of middlemen is changing quite a bit these days. In the past, it was about them being gatekeepers. If you wanted to be a successful musician you had to sign a deal with one of a tiny number of big record labels. If you wanted to be a filmmaker you had to get a big studio to help you out. If you wanted to be an author, you had to sign a deal with a big publisher. And, since those middlemen acted as the only paths to success, they were able to dictate absolutely ridiculous terms. Just take, for example, the typical record label contract, which wasn't just a "loan" or an "investment," but them basically buying all of your copyrights and you still have to pay all of the money back from your earnings... but you don't get the copyrights back after you do so. These were amazingly one-sided deals that totally put the middlemen in the power position.

What's fascinating (and wonderful) to see today is how the changing marketplace means that the actual content creators are in control. This doesn't mean the death of middlemen -- not by a long shot. There's still a huge role for middlemen to play -- but it's as enablers, not gatekeepers. In a world with enablers, the content creators are still the ones in control. The middlemen become supporting players. This is why I always find it funny when those who support the old system claim that they're the ones "helping" creative types. But that's clearly not the case. What they're helping are the gatekeeper middlemen, who have done everything possible to pressure content creators into bad deals because they had no other choice. These days, thanks to the wider choices enabled by the internet, content creators are able to restack the pyramid and put themselves in control, with middlemen actually helping, rather than capturing all of the value.

We already wrote about Conan O'Brien's embrace of social media in Fortune's article about Conan 2.0, but there was another part of the article that I wanted to highlight in this post. And that's the fact that the deal O'Brien signed with TBS is quite different than the traditional TV deal, in that it's not TBS's show that O'Brien appears on, but it's O'Brien's show... with TBS as a distribution partner. But O'Brien and his company really have all the control -- including over the digital side of things. Even the video clips from his show don't come from TBS or use a TBS video player. They're all Team Coco.

O'Brien is in control of all the on-air creative and, just as important, all the digital use of his content. He and his production company Conaco own the show.... It's the opposite of O'Brien's setup at NBC, says Ross, a partner in the company. "Conaco owns the show, and TBS is a participant. At Tonight, NBC owned the show, and we were participants." And ownership makes all the difference for O'Brien and his team.

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

This reminds me of another story from a few years back about a band that announced a label had signed with them, rather than them signing with a label. It's happening slowly, but the power positions are shifting and the fact that the gatekeeper role is less and less important, and the enabler role is more and more important, also means that the content creators themselves have more power. They no longer need to sign soul-crushing, abusively one-sided deals. Instead, they can sign deals that put them in control, where the middlemen are truly middlemen helping the content creator, rather than owning the content creator.

We're really not there yet, for most content creators however. The old types of deals are still being signed. But I think we're starting to see signs of that changing. It'll take more time, but the good news is that the content creators are getting more leverage, just as the old middlemen are starting to lose their leverage. And the end result should be a lot better in the long run. The middlemen still have their role in the middle, rather than at the top of the pyramid.

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How NBC Wanted Conan O'Brien Dump His Twitter Account

Mike Masnick — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 08:26:07 PST

There are times that make you wonder how NBC Universal has survived this long, with its almost preternatural ability to screw up the most basic concepts. This is the company that freaked out about YouTube, even when YouTube specifically helped revive interest in shows like Saturday Night Live after the Lazy Sunday video went viral five years ago. This is the same company that was proud of the fact that they made it hard for people to watch the Olympics online -- even though NBC's own data showed that as more people watched online, it actually drove more people to watch on TV. Of course, this is also the company who has lobbied the government for greater protections, claiming that piracy hurts corn farmers and that more money should be spent stopping piracy than fighting bank robbers. And, most recently, it was the company that fired the guy who uploaded the amusing Today Show clip of Bryant Gumbel and Katie Couric discovering the internet.

But, apparently, no single moment seems to cement in people's minds the cluelessness of NBC more than the firing of Conan O'Brien.

Of course, out of that situation, O'Brien has emerged stronger than ever in many ways and a large part of that has been his somewhat unexpected and (initially) hesitant embrace of social media. Fortune has a wonderful article describing the details of what they call "Conan 2.0," which is fascinating in many ways -- including the many ways in which things are so different than when he was an employee at NBC. But the story that stood out most to me was how, soon after Conan started using Twitter, NBC threatened him and wanted him to shut down the account.

You may recall that as part of his separation package from NBC, Conan had to sign a deal that kept him off network TV for a while and forbade him from disparaging the network. But it said nothing about the internet -- in part because the folks at NBC still live in a TV centric world where they didn't even think about the internet as an issue. So the whole Twitter thing took them by surprise:

"What was interesting about it," points out O'Brien, "is that all the legal prohibitions were coming from people in the old media. They were saying you can't do all these things, and pretty quickly we realized, 'Wait a minute!' Someone said, 'Does that include Twitter? No. It doesn't include Twitter.' And so I started tweeting."

[...] Just as quickly, O'Brien's team began to hear that NBC was far from happy. "The network isn't crazy about you tweeting. They're not sure that's cool," O'Brien recalls being told. His response was simple: "Tell them I would be thrilled if they shut down my Twitter account. I'd love it if that got out. You think PR's been bad up till now? Wait till you take away my Twitter account."

The article then goes on to highlight how much more digitally connected O'Brien and his team have become, even to their own surprise. For example, while they had originally planned an ad budget to advertise O'Brien's standup tour last year, instead they decided to just mention it on Twitter. They figured if that failed, they could easily go back to traditional advertising. Turns out they didn't need to. Within hours of the first tweet about the tour, they had sold out two shows at Radio City Music Hall (which holds over 6,000 people). The first day alone they sold 120,000 tickets. The entire tour sold out within a few days -- with no money spent on advertising.

The other interesting bit -- that also shows a massive difference from NBC -- is how his team deals with online clips of his show. Rather than hoarding it, they get stuff online quickly and spread it widely:

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

Part of the reason this works is the structure of the deal with TBS. Basically, TBS is just a distribution partner, rather than the owner of the show. O'Brien's company owns the show and has full creative control, and can control all of the digital experience. The video player they use is their own -- not one from TBS. The whole article is really quite fascinating and worth reading, as it shows how embracing social media and what fans want in a really strong way can pay back amazing dividends.

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Levi Johnston's Lawyers Threaten Twitter, Despite No Legal Basis

Mike Masnick — Mon, 9 Nov 2009 14:26:00 PST

Last week, Conan O'Brien had William Shatner stop by and read what was believed (at the time) to be twitter messages by Levi Johnston, the former boyfriend to Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol (and father of Bristol's child). O'Brien has done this before, having Shatner read out Sarah Palin's twitter messages, as spoken word poetry. It's an amusing gimmick. The only problem this time around was that the tweets weren't actually by Johnston, but an impostor. O'Brien quickly apologized. Fair enough.

However, what caught my attention was that Johnston's lawyers didn't just threaten O'Brien, but they threatened Twitter itself:

"My client, Levi Johnston, is being impersonated on your media (Twitter) and this is leading to libel and slanderous statements being attributed to him. ... We want you to put an immediate end to this illegal activity. ... You are being used as a medium to promote this illegality and we want immediate action. ... You are now on notice and must take steps to put an end to what is clearly against the law and against your policy. ... We want to know what steps you will be taking to correct what is clearly a problem which is escalating."

Now, you can understand why they were upset, and Twitter is usually pretty good at responding to such requests and disabling the accounts (sometimes even going too far). However, the claim that Twitter is now "on notice and must take steps" to end the account is simply not true. Twitter, as the service provider, is protected against such claims and has no specific obligation under the law to change things, no matter how much "notice" his lawyers give. You would think that Johnston's lawyers would understand that -- and that they would be aware of earlier attempts, like the one by Tony La Russa to blame Twitter for an impostor, in which La Russa was forced to learn why Twitter is not liable.

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