One of my late night TV habits is watching "The Colbert Report", a faux conservative knock-off of the popular Fox News program, "The O'Reilly Factor". Stephen Colbert is a great comedian, and his spoofing of the Fox News powerhouse cable news program is hilarious.
He also manages to land some pretty big guests. The latest was Richard Branson,
who just launched Virgin America airllines following his success with Virgin Atlantic based in England.
The two got together, and things got interesting to say the least. Here's a report of a reported (planned?) spat between the two:
"Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson hurled a glass of water of a TV presenter after he was banned from talking about his new airline, according to reports.
The multi-millionaire, 57, was being interviewed by US political comic Stephen Colbert in front of a live studio audience in New York when he lost his cool.
But despite being drenched, the host, who Branson had named a plane after, refused to be phased.
He demanded a bottle of water from aides and then retaliated by flinging it that over his multi-millionaire guest."
But was it all just a PR stunt aiming to generate interest in the interview, and Branson's new airline? They New York Post wonders just that:
Comedy Central officials claim it was all in good fun.
But audience members who attended the taping last Tuesday blogged that Colbert looked ruffled and angry afterward - and that the two men sat in stony silence for a few seconds.
If you want a complete rundown of the spat, here's a good source.
My point in all this? Sometimes fights, fake or real, can be great for business. This has turned a normal ho-hum interview on a cable news channel into Internet fodder, speculation, and hype. And it works for both the TV show as well as Branson and his new airline.
Need to generate some buzz and some new viewers/passengers/sales leads? Create some news by doing the unexpected.
It works!
Thanks for the link love!
I honestly don't think that it was planned or a stunt. As a matter of fact, the news reports are conflicting as to whether the feud will ever even air. Branson is scheduled to be on the show in a week or so, and I guess we'll find out then. I doubt it would have gotten any kind of media play had our blog not originally leaked the story, and then had it picked up by BoingBoing.net, one of the largest blogs out there.
And the "stony silence" quote from your article, taken from the Sun report I assume since that's the the first I saw of that sentance, seems to be a bit off from the first-hand reports that we reported. The story is quickly mutating with each telling. Here is a source for all of the coverage of the story on my blog, NoFactZone.net, and you can see how the story is quickly changing as it goes from a single source on my independent blog, to being linked by bigger blogs, to being published in the mainstream media with no trace of the original source of the story:
http://www.nofactzone.net/?cat=58
Posted by: DB Ferguson | August 14, 2007 11:33 AM | Permalink to Comment