As many people predicted when Rocketboom host Amanda Congdon split up so acrimoniously with her former partner Andrew Baron (which I wrote about here), it didn’t take long for someone to see the potential benefit of having an attractive video-blogger with a built-in following on their payroll. Amanda has signed a deal with ABC to appear regularly on ABC News Now and also to do a regular video-blog for ABC’s website, and is also developing a show with HBO as well.
Business Week magazine has a Q&A session with Amanda, in which they talk about the differences between putting together a video-blog and a segment for a daily TV news show. She also hints that she will be able to do a little more, well… fact-checking than she could at Rocketboom.
It isn’t going to be something that we throw together and hope the facts are right. It’s ABC News, so it definitely needs to be not false information. At Rocketboom, the fact checking was a little bit—it was what it was, it wasn’t always perfect. I was doing it on my own. At ABC, I will have people to help me.
Amanda is wrapping up her Amanda Across America project, where she made the announcement about HBO and ABC today, and says she will continue to blog at her personal site, AmandaCongdon.com. And despite some ongoing criticism of Amanda for the fallout from the Rocketboom fiasco, she’s getting props for her recent moves, including some from Janeane — who wins the prize for best headline.
And while Amanda is moving from Web to TV, there are those who have gone the other way, including former CNN anchor Daryn Kagan.