Rocketboom
Encyclopedia
Rocketboom is a daily vlog
produced by Andrew Baron
that was most recently hosted by Meme Molly until August 25, 2011. Joanne Colan
hosted from July 12, 2006 until April 17, 2009. In the intervening time between Colan and Molly, Caitlin Hill
hosted a few episodes in April 2009. The show was originally hosted by Amanda Congdon
from October 26, 2004 until July 5, 2006.
Rocketboom is presented in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Each weekday Rocketboom offers oddities, vlog excerpts and explores emerging social movements. It sometimes presents political commentary. Apart from an occasional use of old newsreel footage or vintage commercials, mainstream media is avoided. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony feature supplemental material that isn't fit for the vlog.
On September 13, 2010 Rocketboom was the first channel to participate in a test of YouTube's
live streaming platform.
signed a one-year distribution and advertising deal with Rocketboom for a seven-figure guarantee plus a share of future revenues generated by the show. Sony distribution would send the show across multiple digital platforms such as Crackle
and its syndication network, the PS3, the PSP
and Bravia Internet video link televisions. Rocketboom is also available on its website, TiVo
, iTunes
, Miro, Apple TV, Pando
, TVTonic and other web video portals, including YouTube
, Metacafe
, blip.tv
and Vuze
.
. Cheese also features on-screen and produces Rocketboom's spin-off Know Your Meme
.
Rocketboom and Rocketboom Human Wire's World Video Report both present webcasts packaged by its correspondents in the United States, Europe and Kenya: Annie Tsai (Los Angeles), Andy Carvin (Washington DC), Zadi Diaz (Los Angeles), Ella Morton (New York), Ruud Elmendorp (Nairobi), Steve Garfield
(Boston), Milt Lee (South Dakota), Chuck Olsen (Minneapolis), Bre Pettis (Seattle), Tyson Root (Houston), Stefan M. Seydel (Switzerland/Germany/Austria) and Graham Walker (Prague).
Rocketboom started on October 2004 as a daily webcast
staged as a mini-Newscast. By December it already had 25,000 downloads per day and growing, with its promotion depending mostly of word-of-mouth. Its revenue came from selling ad space at the end of the reports.
In its first ten months, it went from an initial 700 viewers to 70,000 viewers. The vlog's success was noted in the summer of 2005 by CBS Evening News
, Wired News
and other publications. BusinessWeek
labeled it "the most popular site of its kind on the Net."
When, on October 2005, Steve Jobs
from Apple, was introducing the new iPod 5G's video podcast capabilities, he showed a playlist of video podcasts that included Rocketboom. During Steve Jobs' introduction of the iTV in September 2006, when discussing podcasts, host Joanne Colan
was shown.
The January 9, 2006, issue of Newsweek stated that Rocketboom had "130,000 daily viewers."
On February 2, 2006 Rocketboom was incorporated into an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
in a fictional scene of a murderer watching a Rocketboom commentary on the crime. In the month following the CSI episode, the number of Rocketboom viewers jumped to 200,000. As noted by Dan Mitchell in the New York Times (2006-03-11), this is similar to the size of a small cable show audience. In "A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV," Mitchell wrote:
In April and May 2006, Rocketboom introduced its first commercials. The first commercial sponsors were TRM and Earthlink. Each of which was a series of 5 commercials shown, one per day, over the week that they were featured.
In Fall of 2006, Rocketboom's popularity claims and self-published statistics came into question.
In an interview with Dow Jones, Baron claimed "400,000 viewers per day" and that "some episodes are more popular and receive well over a million complete downloads." After extensive analysis BusinessWeek reported that Rocketboom provided incorrect statistics data resulting in "cutting in half the original estimate... to 78,500 downloads" and noting that Rocketboom refused "to let any third party... verify these stats."
In March 2008, Compete.com
named Rocketboom one of the fastest growing video startups on the internet.
In June 2009, Rocketboom announced it was looking for two new anchors, after not being able to reach a deal with current host Caitlin Hill
. Job postings for the New York position and the new Los Angeles desk sparked a heated public talent search as the positions listed a base salary of $80,000 plus a $10,000 signing bonus and 3% of ad revenues. It is believed to be the highest paid on-camera job in web television.
:
Vlog
Video blogging, sometimes shortened to vlogging or vidding or vidblogging is a form of blogging for which the medium is video, and is a form of Web television. Entries often combine embedded video or a video link with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded in one take...
produced by Andrew Baron
Andrew Baron
Andrew Michael Baron is the creator of Rocketboom, Know Your Meme and the video aggregator site, Magma. Baron holds a BA in Philosophy from Bates College and an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. Baron has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Parsons and was...
that was most recently hosted by Meme Molly until August 25, 2011. Joanne Colan
Joanne Colan
Joanne Colan is the former MTV Europe VJ and former anchor of the vlog Rocketboom. She currently is on Discovery's show "Dean of Invention" alongside Dean Kamen as a correspondent.-Television:...
hosted from July 12, 2006 until April 17, 2009. In the intervening time between Colan and Molly, Caitlin Hill
Caitlin Hill
Caitlin Alexandra Hill is an Australian YouTube personality under the name TheHill88. She produces, edits and uploads her videos from her home in New York City....
hosted a few episodes in April 2009. The show was originally hosted by Amanda Congdon
Amanda Congdon
Congdon sometimes went on the road. One episode showed her dancing in various locations throughout St. Petersburg, Russia. She has performed her frenetic signature dance in the streets and parks of Austin and other cities. In the 15 April 2005 episode, she stood in Washington Square Park and posed...
from October 26, 2004 until July 5, 2006.
Rocketboom is presented in the format of a newscast with a comedic slant. Each weekday Rocketboom offers oddities, vlog excerpts and explores emerging social movements. It sometimes presents political commentary. Apart from an occasional use of old newsreel footage or vintage commercials, mainstream media is avoided. The Rocketboom weblog and Apollo Pony feature supplemental material that isn't fit for the vlog.
On September 13, 2010 Rocketboom was the first channel to participate in a test of YouTube's
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
live streaming platform.
Distribution
In August 2008, Sony Pictures TelevisionSony Pictures Television
Sony Pictures Television, Inc. is an American and global television production/distribution subsidiary of Sony Pictures Entertainment. In turn, the latter is part of the Japanese conglomerate Sony.-Background:...
signed a one-year distribution and advertising deal with Rocketboom for a seven-figure guarantee plus a share of future revenues generated by the show. Sony distribution would send the show across multiple digital platforms such as Crackle
Crackle
Crackle is a digital network and studio, featuring commercially supported streaming video content in Flash Video format. It is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, and its content consists primarily of Sony's library of films and television shows...
and its syndication network, the PS3, the PSP
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
and Bravia Internet video link televisions. Rocketboom is also available on its website, TiVo
TiVo
TiVo is a digital video recorder developed and marketed by TiVo, Inc. and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose features include "Season Pass" schedules which record every new episode of a series, and "WishList"...
, iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
, Miro, Apple TV, Pando
Pando (application)
Pando is proprietary software for P2P file sharing. It's mainly aimed at sending files using both peer-to-peer and client–server architectures that would normally be too large to send via more conventional means.Stable release: win 2.5.1.11 , mac 2.5.1.4...
, TVTonic and other web video portals, including YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, Metacafe
Metacafe
Metacafe is a web site that specializes in short-form video entertainment in the categories of movies, video games, sports, music and TV.The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv...
, blip.tv
Blip.tv
The website Blip.tv is a platform for web series. The company offers a for the "best in original web series" and also offers a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions....
and Vuze
Vuze
Vuze is a BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to by .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content...
.
People
The Rocketboom production team members include its creator Andrew Baron (writer, producer, director), Meme Molly (host), Kenyatta Cheese (producer) and Leah D'EmilioLeah D'Emilio
Leah D'Emilio is an American media personality. She was the co-host of the Mahalo Daily podcast show alongside Lon Harris.-Background:...
. Cheese also features on-screen and produces Rocketboom's spin-off Know Your Meme
Know Your Meme
Know Your Meme is a web series originally from Rocketboom which documents various Internet memes and other online phenomena, and also investigates new and changing memes through research and the scientific method...
.
Anchors
- Amanda CongdonAmanda CongdonCongdon sometimes went on the road. One episode showed her dancing in various locations throughout St. Petersburg, Russia. She has performed her frenetic signature dance in the streets and parks of Austin and other cities. In the 15 April 2005 episode, she stood in Washington Square Park and posed...
- October 26, 2004 until July 5, 2006 - Joanne ColanJoanne ColanJoanne Colan is the former MTV Europe VJ and former anchor of the vlog Rocketboom. She currently is on Discovery's show "Dean of Invention" alongside Dean Kamen as a correspondent.-Television:...
- July 12, 2006 until April 17, 2009 - Caitlin HillCaitlin HillCaitlin Alexandra Hill is an Australian YouTube personality under the name TheHill88. She produces, edits and uploads her videos from her home in New York City....
- April 2009 - Meme Molly - July 2009 until August 25, 2011
Rocketboom and Rocketboom Human Wire's World Video Report both present webcasts packaged by its correspondents in the United States, Europe and Kenya: Annie Tsai (Los Angeles), Andy Carvin (Washington DC), Zadi Diaz (Los Angeles), Ella Morton (New York), Ruud Elmendorp (Nairobi), Steve Garfield
Steve Garfield
Steve Garfield is a videographer and video blogger based in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the Internet's first video bloggers, Garfield began experimenting with the technique in 2002 and launched his own video blog on January 1, 2004....
(Boston), Milt Lee (South Dakota), Chuck Olsen (Minneapolis), Bre Pettis (Seattle), Tyson Root (Houston), Stefan M. Seydel (Switzerland/Germany/Austria) and Graham Walker (Prague).
Popularity
Webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...
staged as a mini-Newscast. By December it already had 25,000 downloads per day and growing, with its promotion depending mostly of word-of-mouth. Its revenue came from selling ad space at the end of the reports.
In its first ten months, it went from an initial 700 viewers to 70,000 viewers. The vlog's success was noted in the summer of 2005 by CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
, Wired News
Wired News
Wired News is an online technology news website, formerly known as HotWired, that split off from Wired magazine when the magazine was purchased by Condé Nast Publishing in the 1990s. Wired News was owned by Lycos not long after the split, until Condé Nast purchased Wired News on July 11, 2006...
and other publications. BusinessWeek
BusinessWeek
Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
labeled it "the most popular site of its kind on the Net."
When, on October 2005, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman and inventor widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution. He was co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc...
from Apple, was introducing the new iPod 5G's video podcast capabilities, he showed a playlist of video podcasts that included Rocketboom. During Steve Jobs' introduction of the iTV in September 2006, when discussing podcasts, host Joanne Colan
Joanne Colan
Joanne Colan is the former MTV Europe VJ and former anchor of the vlog Rocketboom. She currently is on Discovery's show "Dean of Invention" alongside Dean Kamen as a correspondent.-Television:...
was shown.
The January 9, 2006, issue of Newsweek stated that Rocketboom had "130,000 daily viewers."
On February 2, 2006 Rocketboom was incorporated into an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation is an American crime drama television series, which premiered on CBS on October 6, 2000. The show was created by Anthony E. Zuiker and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
in a fictional scene of a murderer watching a Rocketboom commentary on the crime. In the month following the CSI episode, the number of Rocketboom viewers jumped to 200,000. As noted by Dan Mitchell in the New York Times (2006-03-11), this is similar to the size of a small cable show audience. In "A Blog Writes the Obituary of TV," Mitchell wrote:
- One recent week, the video blog Rocketboom drew an average of 200,000 people a day to watch its short daily news reports on technology, the arts and other topics. The Abrams Report on MSNBC, meanwhile, drew 215,000 viewers to its weekday hourlong show about legal issues. Does this anecdote -- that an unpopular cable news show and a wildly popular Web site draw similarly sized audiences -- prove that the Internet is upending the economics of the television business? It does for Prince Campbell, a former media executive who runs the Chartreuse (BETA) blog. Mr. Campbell wields superlatives in a particularly bloggish manner at chartreuse.wordpress.com. "Broadcast television is dead," he declares. "Just like the Internet killed the music industry, it's about to do the same thing to broadcast TV."
In April and May 2006, Rocketboom introduced its first commercials. The first commercial sponsors were TRM and Earthlink. Each of which was a series of 5 commercials shown, one per day, over the week that they were featured.
In Fall of 2006, Rocketboom's popularity claims and self-published statistics came into question.
In an interview with Dow Jones, Baron claimed "400,000 viewers per day" and that "some episodes are more popular and receive well over a million complete downloads." After extensive analysis BusinessWeek reported that Rocketboom provided incorrect statistics data resulting in "cutting in half the original estimate... to 78,500 downloads" and noting that Rocketboom refused "to let any third party... verify these stats."
In March 2008, Compete.com
Compete.com
Compete.com is a web traffic analysis service of Compete, Inc. which operates in the United States and publishes the approximate number of global visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the world...
named Rocketboom one of the fastest growing video startups on the internet.
In June 2009, Rocketboom announced it was looking for two new anchors, after not being able to reach a deal with current host Caitlin Hill
Caitlin Hill
Caitlin Alexandra Hill is an Australian YouTube personality under the name TheHill88. She produces, edits and uploads her videos from her home in New York City....
. Job postings for the New York position and the new Los Angeles desk sparked a heated public talent search as the positions listed a base salary of $80,000 plus a $10,000 signing bonus and 3% of ad revenues. It is believed to be the highest paid on-camera job in web television.
Awards/Nominations
Streamy AwardsStreamy Awards
The Streamy Awards, popularly known as the Streamys, are presented annually by the International Academy of Web Television to recognize excellence in the arts and science of web television production, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ceremony at which the awards are...
:
- Streamy Award for Best News or Politics Web Series (2009) (nomination)
Sources
- Axelrod, Jim. CBS Evening News: "Eye on America" (August 19, 2005)
- Farhi, Paul. American Journalism Review: "Rocketboom!" (June-July, 2006)
- Goldstein, Andrew M. "The Rise of the Video Blog," Rolling Stone, April 21, 2006.
- Barnako, Frank: "Rocketboom May Charge for Shows" (Mar 22, 2007)
- BusinessWeek: "Splitsville at Rocketboom"
- BusinessWeek: "Rocketboom's Powerful Lift-Off"
- Chartreuse: "The BIG Problem: Why Paul Scrivens Is Smarter Than Les Moonves"
- Mediashift: Glaser, Mark. "Rocketboom Nets $80,000 After eBay Auction"
- Interview with Baron on TUAW
- Newsweek: "Right to the Top" (1/9/06)
- Robin Good interviews Baron and Congdon
Official sites
Interviews
- Interview at masternewmedia.org
- Interview at tuaw.com
- Audio interview with Baron and Amanda CongdonAmanda CongdonCongdon sometimes went on the road. One episode showed her dancing in various locations throughout St. Petersburg, Russia. She has performed her frenetic signature dance in the streets and parks of Austin and other cities. In the 15 April 2005 episode, she stood in Washington Square Park and posed...
on The Sound of Young AmericaThe Sound of Young AmericaThe Sound of Young America is a public radio program and podcast based in Los Angeles, California and distributed by Public Radio International... - Stars in Your Lap
- Interview with Andrew Baron from Rocketboom
Newspaper articles
- The Rise of the Video Blog
- Rocketboom to Sell Ad Time Via eBay, Retain Creative Control
- Who has Been Naughty or Nice in Web 2.0?
- Watching Rocketboom's Ad
- The Rocketboom Ruckus, July 17, 2006
- TV Stardom on $20 a Day
- Vlogger Cyber-Culls The News
- Why EarthLink Embraces Social Media
- Video blogs, ready for prime time
- Favorite Web Site, Best of the Web
- Rocketboom's Powerful Lift-Off
- Rocketboom Ebay Ad Auction Yields Winners
- A Guide to the Online Video Explosion
- Rise of the Web Video Star
- Watch Telly without a TV
- Rocketboom Nets $80,000 After eBay Auction
- Andrew Baron Rockets In
- Rocketboom!