Rocketboom Goes (Lisa) Nova

Rocketboom is adding YouTube comedian Lisa Nova to its ranks as the popular web show expands to 7 episodes per week. Rocketboom anchor Joanne Colan is staying on, with Nova starting up the “west coast Rocketboom news desk.” Rocketboom creator Andrew Baron made the announcement today on his blog.

Nova will continue to post bits to her YouTube Channel and will create and host two Rocketboom news days per week. From Baron’s post, it looks like Rocketboom could be prepping Nova for a potential spin-off. Baron writes that he believes the way to build a multi-faceted new media empire is to launch new properties from existing ones (he cites Stephen Colbert coming out of The Daily Show). Nova’s popularity online could merit its own show.

In August of this year, Rocketboom signed a seven-figure distribution deal with Sony Pictures Television, and it looks like that move is paying off. Unlike Revision3, which has seen the amount of content it creates reduced, Rocketboom is expanding with projects like Know Your Meme and Human Wire and says its staple daily news offerings will double in 2009.

While the content is growing, Rocketboom distribution could soon be shrinking. I emailed Baron to get some updated viewership stats, which he declined to share, but he did include the following nugget, “There are many platforms that we distribute to (through Tubemogul for instance) that are not providing enough significant value to offset the watering down that may occur by being anywhere. Thus, we will likely begin to ween away from being everywhere to only being in the places where there is a substantial demand. “