Rocket news always seems to come in threes. First, Discovery launched yesterday without a hitch (knock wood). Then, North Korea fired off some rockets of its own. Finally (and significantly for the Internet-o-sphere), the popular video blog Rocketboom and its telegenic host Amanda Congdon parted ways this morning.

Congdon announced the news on her new Amanda UnBoomed blog (thanks, Digg), implying that she had left Rocketboom against her wishes, but promising to resurface “hosting some crazy, crazy stuff” in the near future.

This probably rates as a split of CBS/Dan Rather proportion for the video blogging world, and appropriately, there’s some controversy. An unsigned announcement appeared on Rocketboom’s website saying that “Congdon has decided to move to L.A. to pursue opportunities that have arisen for her in Hollywood,” and that co-creator Andrew Baron will remain with Rocketboom in New York, producing and directing the blog’s segments. “Financial” realities and other unnamed difficulties were blamed in part for the blog’s reluctance to follow its host cross country.

Rocketboom, live since October of ’04, claims a viewership in the tens of thousands for its daily installments of talking head pieces centered on internet culture. The blog will reportedly return Monday, July 10 with an interim host while in the “daunting process of recruiting a replacement for Amanda” – Scoble speculates as to who might take over. We hear Star Jones is available…(this obligatory reference brought to you by the Bureau of Obvious Jokes).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Blogging, People on the Move. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.