One of these things is not like the other....If you watched a recent edition of "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" you might not be suprised to know that NBC, a subsidiary of General Electric (GE), has paid $159 for the license to www.hornymanatee.com.
The purchase was a pre-emptive srtike inspired by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as well as by the laws of comedy, which are universal it would seem.
Basically this is a case of life imitating art - the comedy art of Conan O'Brien. The skit on the Dec. 4 installment of the show was about absurdist college sports mascots that Conan and his writers would like to see someday. From this came the "F.S.U." mascot, "the Webcam manatee." Guess you had to be there.
At the end of the skit Conan mentioned that the voyeur was watching www.hornymanatee.com but the problem was as of the taping of the show there was no such site. NBC was then faced with the dilema - what if a viewer somehow acquired the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site. The network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.
According to this NYTimes.com article Mr. O'Brien was stunned and overwhelmed by the viewers' response, which amounted to 3 million hits as of yesterday afternoon, to what had initially been a throwaway line, suggesting how the digital world was effecting traditional media like television.
Mr. O'Brien asked viewers to send in artwork and other material inspired by the manatee to the following e-mail address; conan@hornymanatee.com. He hasn't been dissappointed. Poems, songs and more have been submitted.
Conan's parting shot? “We don’t want the entire show to be ‘Late Night With Horny Manatee,’ ” he said. “Though, of course, it will become that eventually.”
Comment Preview