Amanda Congdon has been forced to leave popular RocketBoom video blog over a disagreement with her partner, Andrew Baron. For details, see the video Amanda recorded and placed on her blog. She says “My partner, Andrew Baron, is no longer interested in being my partner.”
No word yet on who will replace Congdon on the show.
RocketBoom has catapulted itself to success, with 250,000ish daily viewers, distribution via Tivo and $40,000 per week in advertising revenue. It was beginning to rival national cable television shows for audience share.
There is certainly another side to this story – but whatever happened it is an unmitigated disaster for the show. Amanda was RocketBoom. She will certainly go on to continued success. The future of RocketBoom may not be so bright.
TechCrunch has an early profile on RocketBoom from July of 2005.
Update: Andrew Baron has his say on the situatioin (image hosted by Dave Winer), which paints a vastly different picture. Oh and Dave, you are wrong. Listen to the video. Amanda doesn’t say the word “fired”, but she does say words that mean the same thing. The funny thing is, based on what looks like really happened, she’s full of crap. Or both of them are.
Update: I just got off a plane to Europe and things are getting even stupider. I think I’m done with this story.