News Blog

The right combination of smarts, beauty and goofiness drove Amanda Congdon to Web stardom. But perhaps that's not enough to make her a crossover talent.

ABC News announced last week that the online arm of the TV network won't be renewing the one-year contract it extended last November to the former host of Internet humor show, Rocketboom.

Congdon said on her blog that she's the one who decided to call it quits. However the relationship ended, the Internet will not miss Congdon's uninspired video blogs for ABCNews.com, and that's likely not all her fault.

ABC News was wrong for Congdon. The network seemed perplexed over how to use her. Sometimes she was thrust into the role of traditional reporter, taking to the streets to ask the public questions about serious topics (any one of the legion of ABC interns can do that job). Congdon wasn't bad but it wasn't the best way to highlight her humorous side. Moreover, she doesn't see herself as a journalist.

In March she was widely criticized for appearing in infomercials for DuPont and moonlighting for a company she may one day be called upon to report on. She was unapologetic and often repeated--less than convincingly--that the rules for journalism didn't apply to her.

Sadly, the controversy was the most attention Congdon received while at ABC.

Take a look at Congdon's video reports for the network and you'll understand why. She was at her best when delivering news items from behind a desk in the tongue-and-cheek format obviously borrowed from Rocketboom (only the ABC version wasn't as well written).

Rocketboom was loved for the irreverent style of delivering offbeat news. The show was considered cool and underground. Fans of that kind of content aren't going to look for it at ABC News.

In the final tally, Congdon was likely an experiment for ABC so the company loses little. Congdon on the other hand is now without a high profile Web vehicle and perhaps a diminished following.

The best thing she could do is to find a scrappy group of comedy writers and come back with her own Rocketboom competitor.

Originality and Hollywood: an oxymoron?

The entertainment industry has an aura of oozing with creativity, originality and all those things that seem, well, magical.

ABC's free prime-time shows will include 'Ugly Betty.'

(Credit: ABC)

But when one of the players comes out with a blockbuster idea, especially on the business operations front, it's like watching a flock of geese take off. One leads the pack, the others follow. The formation may not always be perfectly aligned, but they're all headed in the same general direction.

The Walt Disney Co.'s Disney-ABC Television Group announced a deal with Time Warner's AOL today that calls for ABC to offer free, full-length prime-time episodes online a day after they premiere. ABC's free prime-time shows, which will begin appearing on AOL Video today, will include the likes of The Bachelor, Desperate Housewives and Ugly Betty. Users will be able to view about four episodes per TV series at any one time.

As noted in a blog by David Kaplan on paidcontent.org, ABC is making a move to syndicate its prime-time shows online, much like CBS.

And ABC's free-prime-time-show announcement follows one made by NBC Universal a day earlier, in which NBC said it tuned in to the concept of offering free downloadable TV shows. NBC's Wednesday announcement said it would offer ad-supported prime time shows, such as The Office and Heroes, that could be downloaded after they aired and remain on users' computers for seven days before virtually vaporizing, according to a report in The New York Times.

NBC's recent plans were spurred after a fallout with Apple that pushed the media company into a deal with Amazon, for its paid shows.

Winter is approaching, time to fly south?

Where's the Dharma beer?

Hurley sizes-up the hatch.

Tonight is the season finale of Lost, and although I'm excited to see what happens, I'm also certain the show will leave us will an unbearable cliffhanger. I felt like rioting at the end of last season. How dare ABC toy with our emotions like this?

Well, to keep rabid fans from doing anything they might regret later (do they get Lost in prison?), Gameloft has created an iPod game of Lost that is downloadable from Apple's iTunes store for $4.99.

The game looks pretty cool and challenging, actually. It has 27 levels, weapons, wild animals, and the infamous "black smoke." You can't choose which character you play as (you're Jack), but the game does let you interact with different characters. I know what I'll be playing during commercial breaks tonight.

There's already a federal indictment of a woman accused of running a call girl ring in Washington D.C. A deputy secretary of state, Randall Tobias, has resigned. Tobias admits to using the services of Pamela Martin & Associates only for back rubs. Deborah Palfrey, the woman who ran Pamela Martin services, is gaining some notoriety in the blogosphere.

Palfrey is threatening to call many prominent D.C. men into court to testify on her behalf. Clearly, Tobias would happily back up Palfrey's claim that her service was about massage and fantasy, not prostitution.

So where are the names? ABC News was apparently given all of Palfrey's phone records from years of transactions in Washington. Yet so far ABC has only hinted about the men found in those records. ABC does say a Bush administration economist, a prominent CEO, some military officials, lobbyists and the head of a conservative think tank are on the list. There are two things to keep in mind: First, ABC wants to carefully confirm names and phone numbers.

Second, the May ratings period began April 26 and ends May 23. The more public curiosity about the names, the bigger the ratings when ABC does finally release them. There are numerous e-mails from ABCNews.com readers asking for the names; inquiring e-mailers want to know. Sadly for Internet users, most of the names will appear on TV before they appear on the ABC Web site. ABC's TV profits are still far greater than what they make off the Internet. Bet we see most of the best big names before May 23.