It’s no surprise that in these early days of Internet TV, popular web sites are leveraging their brands by creating online versions of themselves. Case in point: Diggnation. This snarky half-hour chatfest (now in its third year) is the talk show version of Digg.com, the “best of the web” social bookmarking site. Digg.com’s smart aggregation of the Internet’s most compelling stories/sites of the moment made it almost instantly popular after its launch in late 2004. These days, if an item on your site is “Dugg,” its page views will shoot skyward into the high thousands or even more.
Diggnation is hosted by Digg co-founder Kevin Rose and his former cable TV cohort, Alex Albrecht. Perhaps due to their history together, they have a rapid-fire, easygoing rapport, and are clearly comfortable in front of the camera and next to each other. Which helps a lot, as half an hour is a lot of TV to fill. And to be honest, the boys don’t devote much time to the seven Digg.com entries chosen for discussion on each show. Most of Diggnation is basically Rose and Albrecht riffing on wildly varying subjects, both online and off. A long conversational detour in one episode, for example, had the boys spoofing the sincerity and genuineness of the “lol” tag. “Do you ever sit there in a chat and you’re like [laughing hysterically]?” mused Abrecht doubtfully. “What would be the acronym for ‘bored off my ass’?”
The two hosts are funny, and their wiseass take on the world undoubtedly strikes a chord with the show’s 18-34 male demographic, the most prized audience in advertising. But there are indications that Diggnation’s popularity might have reached a plateau or even declined — according to recent figures from Revision3 (the show’s parent Internet TV channel, in which Rose is an investor), Diggnation’s audience tops 200,000 viewers per episode. This number is lower than the 250,000 downloads of Diggnation claimed by the company in September 2006. This indicates little opportunity for growth or broader audience appeal.
Nevertheless, Diggnation does bring home the revenue bacon. Each show has several famous and well-funded sponsors such as Netflix, Fox and Microsoft. Apparently these heavy-hitters like the comedy stylings of the show and see the potential in it. Score one “Dugg,” at least, for Rose and Albrecht.
