Ronan Farrow: Awesome on Twitter, Awful on Television [View all]

[flamingdem]

http://variety.com/2014/voices/columns/ronan-farrows-awesome-social-media-resume-isnt-translating-well-to-his-msnbc-gig-1201129676/


Andrew Wallenstein
Editor-in-chief: Digital
@awallenstein

Ronan Farrow has the kind of resume that’s difficult to match. He graduated from college at the tender age of 15; went on to collect degrees from Yale Law School and Oxford U., the latter on a Rhodes scholarship; and worked at the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs and for the Obama administration.

Impressive as all that is, none of those credentials finishes among the top three reasons MSNBC gave him his own show last month. In ascending order, they are: the endless promotional value that comes with his being the progeny of Mia Farrow; his movie-star good looks; and most important of all … he’s awesome on Twitter.

That may sound trivial, but to think otherwise is naive. There are plenty of policy wonks out there with resumes that can fill a phone book, but very few of them boast a built-in audience on the strength of their online personality.

Farrow somehow manages to be a combination of funny, charming or insightful in every single tweet without the usual mistake Twitter stars make: They just plain overdo it.

Which makes it all the more mystifying that MSNBC’s savvy move to bring him to TV has turned out to be such a dud, drawing mostly negative reviews.

It’s an interesting test case in the tricky translation to a different platform of a star best known in social media. The logic behind making such a conversion seems as sound as it is simple: Bringing over someone with a powerful direct connection to 238,000 followers gives a TV show a running start in the ratings. But somewhere on the way to TV, Farrow’s appeal got lost.

?w=670&h=377&crop=1