If you're not busy on Saturday night, maybe you'll want to try your best line on Jenny McCarthy during the "All-Star Chat Party" being thrown to celebrate the launch of NBC Live on Yahoo Chat.
In a move NBC touts as proof of its leadership in the convergence of the Web and TV, the network is teaming up with Yahoo to parade scores of prime-time and soap celebrities across Yahoo's chat site. The deal, announced Monday, means big-time plugs for Yahoo on prime-time TV, online promotions for NBC, and shared advertising revenues for both companies from sponsors of the new star chats - not to mention a potential flocking of day-time TV watchers to the Web.
"We're providing intimate access to the stars," said Edmond Sanctis, senior vice president and general manager of NBC Digital Productions, who added that the new twice-weekly chats can be seen as "a kind of evolution of the talk show."
Stars will participate from "limousines, buses, subways, on show sets, or in their own homes," says NBC, which apparently wants to produce the chats à la TV, bringing in dramatic elements like a little tension between guest stars or what have you.
"We want to evolve this form [of event-based chat] now that we have the volume and scale of Yahoo behind it," Sanctis said, explaining that with Yahoo's big online audience and technology expertise, he expects the co-produced chats will move beyond pat question-and-answer sessions. He provided no details, however, about the kind of evolution the medium might take, and said for now we can expect old-style Q&A.
By pairing up with Yahoo, rather than hosting the chats on its own NBC.com or MSNBC sites, NBC is following in the footsteps of the scads of companies that recognize the "broadcast reach" of one of the Net's most popular spots. Just last week, Amazon.com signed up for a book-selling niche on Yahoo, and Netscape expanded its co-branded navigation and search service to 12 countries.
NBC Live will come quietly into being this Friday with the Saturday Night Live cast chatting up a storm. A cadre of celebs, including McCarthy, who will star in the new series Jenny, has apparently RSVP'd to attend the all-star party at 7:30 p.m.(PDT) Saturday.
Yahoo seems psyched about the deal, which will buy it some pretty priceless advertising - mentions on prime-time TV - and offer it a chance to start up yet another moneymaking venture: events as chat.
"We really haven't done any event-driven chat," said Ellen Siminoff, director of communities at Yahoo, who described the company's million-user chat area as a model for unstructured chat. Once this foray into the world of "structured chat" is under way, the bustling Yahoo Chat site may well lend itself to hosting other revenue-generating events with authors or government officials or other assorted famous types.
"I don't think it's a dumbing down, but an extension of community for the Web," she said of the celebrity chats. Already Yahoo offers a Web Celeb site, and partnered with Guess to put up the Model of the Month site.
Siminoff was realistic about the kind of chat the celebrity parties might engender. "I don't know that everybody will have intellectual conversation," she said.
