Conan O’Brien stumbled into another great example of viewers interacting with and reshaping what appears on broadcast TV. This one happened when Conan ad-libbed the URL hornymanatee.com after a segment in which an FSU manatee appears in front of a Webcam.
According to NBC’s legal department, the network must buy any URLs that are mentioned on air that don’t already exist. (Otherwise someone could buy it and put indecent material on it.) Conan tells the story in this follow up.
Conan asked viewer to send in art work to fill the new site. People have sent in thousands of pictures, drawings and animations. One even created a video game.
The site has received more than 4.5 million hits in the short time it has been up. The story also made it to The New York Times. That’s the kind of buzz any marketer would love.
