[Dirlewanger]

"PSY's appearance on Ellen, SNL and The Today Show cause zero noticeable spikes"

Shouldn't be surprising in the least. The big network's dinosaur daytime show producers still treat the Internet and its culture as some "silly little thing" and only bother with it when something massive comes out of it...and by then they're the last to report on it.

[anigbrowl]

They're measuring the wrong thing. The TV shows are featuring PSY because he's already popular; they're using him to boost their own ratings. So the question is whether Ellen, SNL and Today saw online traffic spikes after featuring PSY, and I'll bet $5 that the answer is yes.

Mainstream TV shows are not there for discovery purposes; novelty is inversely correlated with audience size, because large audiences are the result of a repeatable formula. Hence the seemingly-endless syndication of comedy shows like Seinfeld, and the practice of distinguishing between 'all new' episodes (never-seen-before) and 'new' episodes (repeats that haven't been screened within the last couple of months).

It's ignorant to write off the producers of network shows as dinosaurs. They are still churning out a new show every week or several times a week, they have huge audiences, and they are making more money than you could ever dream about. I find most of those shows dull, but I'm not the target market and neither are you.

PSY has the most popular video in the history of YouTube and all his other output is going to see a bump in popularity as a result. It's great for his long-term career, but in terms of mass culture it's a flash in the pan (at least outside of Korea). 2 years ago the 'fist pump' song by Hardnox inspired by the TV show Jersey Shore was the summer sensation, played at baseball stadiums and so on. Now the show is ending and I'm pretty sure you'll never hear of Hardnox again until they show up on nostalgia shows (like 'I love 2010!'). On the other hand, Ellen, SNL and the Today show will probably be around in ten years; at most the name or personality will change, but the format will persist. Jay Leno, Dave Letterman, Jimmy Fallon and Conan O'Brien are all basically repeating the Johnny Carson formula for light evening entertainment, and that concept has been chugging along steadily for about 30-40 years now.

[ralfd]

Damn! I accidentally downvoted you because on touch devices like the iPad the arrows are really tiny and really close together and you can't change your vote.

[anigbrowl]

Don't worry, someone else probably accidentally upvoted me so it all works out in the end. I have the same problem on my tablet, HN is not that friendly as a mobile site.

[michaelkscott]

Upvoted to make up for it.

[mecredis]

It is a category mistake to expect a TV appearance to acutely drive views of an online video.

This is because TV is analog and there's no link to click on when PSY is on Ellen. This also means that the ratio of people who are driven to watch his video online because he was on TV is very small.

Of those people who end up watching the video because they saw him on TV, their views are likely dispersed over a long period of time rather than at a single moment like they might be when an article on a very large web portal like Yahoo directly links to the video.

[colmvp]

His SNL appearance was pretty stupid. They basically used actors to replicate his video in a store and only in the last moment brought him out.

[joshtynjala]

This has been the basic formula for cameo appearances on SNL for many, many years. It was a little more simplified this time around, though. Typically, a cameo like that happens after an SNL cast member has made their impersonation a recurring bit from week to week. On the cameo night, the cast member will make an especially big ass of themselves in character, and then the real person will come out with a serious look on their face. The cast member will act like they're in big trouble, and it always gets cheap laughs. It's usually very short, like PSY's appearance, and the person doing the cameo typically has one or two lines at most. I've seen some comedians or the musical guest do a full sketch cameo, but that's pretty rare. I agree that it could have been more entertaining. There wasn't much to work from with their usual formula, and they basically went with the "hey kids, see how cool we are?" angle instead of trying to write something with more comedic substance.

[swang]

How else would they have brought him into the sketch? It was pretty brilliant IMO.

[w1ntermute]

> The big network's dinosaur daytime show producers still treat the Internet and its culture as some "silly little thing" and only bother with it when something massive comes out of it.

That's because their viewers are much the same.