Open Source Comedy (With Manatees)

Conan O'Brien, by way of a throwaway joke, may have inadvertently open-sourced late night comedy. After mentioning a fictitious website during a comedy routine it seems NBC decided it was wise to actually purchase the address to protect itself from Liability. According to the New York Times:

In explaining to the audience the next night what he and his writers had done, Mr. O’Brien marveled, “For $159, NBC, the network that brought you ‘Meet the Press,’ Milton Berle and the nation’s first commercial television station became the proud owner of www.hornymanatee.com.”

And now the joke has legs. Everyone is riffing on the 'horny manatee' idea - there are poems, skits, cartoons, even a 'Manatee and Colmes' spoof of the Fox talker. What was funny briefly on O'Brien's show has become funnier at the hands of an involved audience, who continue to milk it for creative laughs.

Eventually it will become stale, of course, but that isn't the point. NBC has accidentally uncovered one of the most revolutionary implications of a networked population. When you turn things over to the masses - product design and development, consumer taste, media and content creation - it will often (though not always) do a better job than one centralized establishment. Some of the side effects will be frivolous and poor quality (cf. the blogosphere) - but the best of it will be better than the media would have otherwised produced.

Not to beat to death the metaphor, but it is that Army of Davids all over again. Or maybe an army of kids in the hall. The amateur, loitering jokewriters of yore - this group now pretty much includes the whole damn planet.

Tags: Conan O'Brien, NBC, Horny Manatee, Army of Davids