Callaroga Shark Media. Hello, I'm Johnny Mack with your daily comedy news.
It's a Saturday in the summer, so that means an interview. This might
be the last one unless I book somebody being honest to My guests today are
the guys from eight hundred Pound Gorilla Media. They've produced, they're distributed some
of the biggest things like Mark Norman's Out to Lunch, Matt Rife's Only Fans,
Leanne Morgan's I'm every Woman, Sean Patten's Number One. In this forty
five minutes or so, we talk about all things comedy. I started asking
them about the international comedy scene, but as we go along we'll get into
how deals are made and distribution and who's cool and what they're excited about.
Founding member Ian Adkins and co founder Ryan Bitzer are my guests. Let's dive
in. I love how you guys are exploring the international comedy scene. Those
of us who spend a lot of time in comedy, you get I call
it the Emperor of Rome syndrome, where you tend to start at in comedy
rather than laughing, you stand on the back of the room and you go,
oh good callback really well written. I like how this is structured.
I find it's the international comedians these days that are tickling my brain a little
bit more and coming at me from angles that I wasn't expecting. Now.
So I saw as part of the prep here that you were down at the
Melbourne Comedy Festival, which I'm just totally fascinated by. I talked about it
every day on the pod for about a month and it just seems so huge.
So let me actually ask you a question. What was the Melbourne experience
for you? Melbourne was great. It's something that we've wanted to do for
so long. It's just the logistics of flying a few people down there,
and just the time of year it is and everything. It was quite an
undertaking to organize and get done. But it's something we've always wanted to do,
and really we needed the right reason to go there. And one of
the first releases we ever did was audio for Jim Jefferies, and so we
got in earlier. And then when we started to really expand outside of the
United States and Canada, Australia was definitely on a radar right after UK and
and it was just like it was really great to be able to land there
and having had conversations with for about a year with all the agents and artists
and everything like that, and there's such a there's such a connection between the
UK scene and the Australian scene already, and that pipeline existed and we were
able to land and kick up the conversations like we were old friends. It
was really cool and it was a great experience. And like you said,
the kind of material they were doing down there is just different. It's a
small scene. It's a really support that everybody supports each other. It's a
really I had a great time, really great time, and I've had Auzzie
comedians explain to me that how it's more similar to the British scene in which
you put together a i'll call it a show an hour, and then you
do that for a full year, and then you throw that hour out,
as opposed to the American I guess the Americans throw out their material when they
do a special, But the way you're throwing in new material, trying out
new jokes, whereas they're writing performing starting from scratch once a year, and
you're expected to do it once a year. We're not sitting here going just
top by Deer Welcome. Dan Cook doesn't have a new special. Actually he
does this summer. But you can take three years in America and that scene
apparently you can't. That's right. It's one of those things that's fascinating.
What got our attention is going over there and being a part of Fringe and
then Melvin Coobrick's Festival and Citney Comedy Festivals in the same respect is that so
many of those great hours never got captured, whether it's audio, video anything.
So you've got this these fantastic crafted narrative hours that have lost and so
that we're lost to time. And so that was one of the real big
opportunities that we saw to go down there. And this deserves to be put
out properly because if we're able to put this in front of the right audience
internationally, no matter where you are, it's going to resonate. And because
you are doing fresh hours every year, the budgets just aren't there sometimes to
do that, and I think that we strategically take the right projects to preserve.
How did you navigate the scene? There's so many shows every night,
like how do you pick? How do you even as a podcast host,
as us going through the schedule trying to pick out three or four to highlight
every day for thirty days. There were so many like how do you even
navigate that? Yeah, that's a good question. Laura, who's not on
this call, heads up our UK comedy signing and she's watching through all the
comics all the time. That's her job, right, And like Ian said,
there's a close alliance between the UK and Australia and so there are often
times going to each festival back and forth, so she's able to see a
lot of these folks, also see their specials on YouTube and things like that.
And then she literally blocked out all of our calendars and said, Ryan,
you're doing the Damian, you're doing our kid, and you're doing every
and we would go our separate ways and then we'd come back for hopefully a
tent in the middle of it, talk about what we saw, what we
liked, and then we'd go back out and so on and so forth for
what felt like five or six days. But she did a fabulous job of
like, everyone, go see these things, so we can cover a lot
of ground. And she's also yeah, shout out definitely to Laura and our
office Laura brooksus She's been going to the Friends Fringe Festival for years and years.
This was her first Melbourne comedy festival. She does it right. She
goes up sometimes at Fringe for twenty plus days and she's really able to drill
down and find like the really special things that we can focus on and then
we can come in the last few days and be able to see the best
of the best, and yeah, her creation is unparalleled. So are you
acquiring these shows for US distribution, worldwide distribution or are you just scouting talent?
Why are you there? Yeah? So we enter into relationships in a
variety of ways, but most of the time it's for worldwide distribution and an
investment into the both of the markets. We also like and stuff as well.
But the goal is really to comedy so universal and it's not restricted by
boundaries race, religion, income, everything like that. So there's really a
lot of potential for bits and acts and hours to really succeed in a number
of countries. And I think it's really just the lack of promotion and being
able to find the audience to put content in front of has always been historically
the challenge. Just looking at our data and analytics that we use when we
market these releases. It's really fascinating to see the type of people that resonate
with somebody in Kentucky resonating with somebody from Glasgow, and it's just it's really
nice to see. And as you head towards Edinburgh, will it be the
same sort of approach that one's I've never done either, always looking for a
business reason to do so one of these years, but that just seems equally
huge. And from what I've read in the past, I hope you're not
sleeping in a tent or in somebody's garage. I hope you booked your hotel
early. No, that's funny. That's one of the last things last year
because Ryan hasn't been over before and I've been up the last the past few
years. And one of the first things I learned was, you're exactly right.
Is book your accommodation the year why the year before so you can get
something nice. And I was so excited I found this place last year and
I caught up Brian. I'm like, guys, we can get a refund,
but we've got to book it now. Trust me on this one.
And so that's what we'll see in a couple months now. So you guys
have really come on the scene hosting the show every day for a few years.
I had seen your name out there, and I guess for me personally,
the acquisition of the old Laugh Button website is what really started to get
the Gorilla name into my head on a daily business. Can you talk me
about talk to me about that acquisition, why that website and how the site
factors and everything you're trying to do. Yeah, that's a good question.
We entered into a partnership, I want to say it was like twenty nineteen
somewhere around there with the syndicate. The syndicate it's out of New Jersey.
They owned the Laugh Button I'd been running in the last ten years, and
we started to podcast network with them and Robert Kelly, the comedian, and
right as we got going, the pandemic hit and things became difficult, especially
in New York. You're familiar with that scene. It was tough to do
shows and things like that if they weren't online, and we had the studio
and it was a lot of work, and so we did a lot of
pivots during that time, like a lot of companies trying to find our footing,
and I think we did good work. I think the amount of time
we put into that entity didn't equal what the outcome should have been. And
we decided we'd all reached the place at the same time where it was like,
why don't we just all focus on our course of what we do and
part ways and what do you do with the laugh button? And it was
something we really liked and something I think they were like, we want to
see it have a good home and continue on. And so the fit was
good for us because we have so many people coming to the site every day.
It's like, how do we what can we put in front of them
that's topical, that's the thing they're interested in, and comedy. It just
fits really well. And we acquired it at the end of that relationship and
then rebranded it over the course of three to six months dating her Pound World
News, preserved all the links, all of the data that was within it,
and then really you know, honed out that staff. So we have
I don't know, six seven articles coming out a day. I'm not sure
what it is, and we keep it refreshed, we try to have them,
We try to have people at the festivals, reviewing everything, multiple news
hits a day, and then the goal is there is to just hey,
if you like Kyle Kanaane because you read you're here for the news article.
Do you know he has the last three specials over here that you can watch.
And that's the idea. It's a tremendous resource. I love being magicians
showing each other our tricks. I have a sub stack and I will write
article. Here's some podcasts that I'm listening to this week, and one or
two of them will happen to be from my very own network. So I
appreciate the Gorilla News site. It's a legit comedy news site that I use
to prep for this show on a daily business basis. But I see it's
in the oh, by the way, and here, we'll totally get it.
And it's so smart and it's well done and the whole point and I
guess it gets back to everything you guys are trying to do. It's helping
the artist surface content. Right, that's what this is all about to begin
with. Yeah, and that's exactly right. We have this talk about how
not to be like Succession, where you own the news and you just talk
about yourself or your narrative, and so we try to really stay out of
that world and not influence it. But to say that we don't put things
in there that we want to showcase would be silly. Our goal is to
do everything we can to help the people on our roster get to their next
level, and so the news is one of those. But yeah, we
do talk about a lout and joke around a lot about it, but it's
something we're very conscious of staying separate and let them do what they want.
Yeah, I was using it earlier today. There's a fantastic article up on
the day that I recorded this with you guys, the top ten specials for
the first half of the year, and it doesn't match my personal list.
And a part of that is is there's so much content that I just can't
consume it all, or sometimes something comes and goes and I forget. So
I was looking at your list, going, oh wow, there's seven here
that I need to get around to. It's a wonderful resource. It's a
great job by the editorial team. That's great. They'll be happy to hear
that. It's really fun to watch because there's not many people in the space
doing daily stand up comedy news and to see like an a list artists retweet
something that is throwing like a bunch of caffeine all over this part they just
said, pumped like it's the excitement you can feel in the whole office whenever
something like that happened. So it's really nice to see that it's resonating and
people are finding out and staying current on what's happened in comedy more with the
eight hundred pound gorilla guys. In a moment, I will remind you if
you would like this program ad free, you wouldn't have to listen to this
upcoming ad break. You could go to Calaruga dot com slash plus and for
four ninety nine a month, the ads go away. I guess you'd still
hear me doing this though. Oh well, if you're on Apple Podcast,
there's a banner you can click it there and you can actually do a thirty
day free trial to see if you like it without the ads. Maybe it'll
be like, you know, I wish there were more commercials, Well here's
your wish. What's the philosophy here working with the artists, it seems to
be more of It's not the Chris Rocks and the Jerry Seinfelds, who don't
need anyone's help at this point. It's more people who need exposure breaking through.
So walk me through the process with the artists. What's in it for
them? What's in it for you? How does this all work? Yeah?
From the very beginnings, Damien and I formed the company. We're artist
managers and we managed comedians for a while, and Ian comes from the space
as well. A lot of us started in music and entertainment and things like
that, So the idea was always a necessity. We needed something like this
for our clients, and it just didn't exist in the way we wanted to
see it on so so we would complain about it all the time, and
then finally we just decided to start it, because you start sounding an idiot
when you complain about the thing that you could go build, and so we
started building this. We didn't really understand the marketplace fully, and I think
that helped us because we asked a lot of dumb questions. We stumbled around
a lot in the beginning finding our footing, and then once we captured the
sauce of like how to put a track into the Internet in a social media
form and have it spray out across the world. That that's a cool feeling,
and so that everything you do is going to have that virality and you
can't really plan it, but when it happens, it's very cool. We
just try to take every project that comes in, do the best we can
buy it, and then let the fans take it from there. So in
terms of how we do deals, we kind of mold to what the artist
is looking for. There's no set it and forget it. There's no one
contract. Every artist comes to us with a different take on what they're trying
to do or what's important to them, And so the initial conversation after we
like an hour or we like what thirty minutes they have done on tape,
is what are you trying to accomplish? And then it's always very similar things,
and then you really try to hone in on ways that you just want
more butts in the seats when you do the tour, do you want to
make money? You just want more eyeballs on the special? What's the goal?
And then we fine tune the strategy and the deal from there. Who's
recording it, who's outlaying the money, what's the risk, and then if
we're putting up the money, then it's a pretty simple deal where it's late.
We just want to make our money back. You're going to prove everything
that we spend, so there's no bs, and then once the first dollar
profit goes in, it's split and it's we just try to create something that's
fair. But we also got to make sure we're a business in twenty twenty
five. And how do you go about scouting talent or is it mostly on
the web these days you're out hustling in the clubs. You got the younger
guys doing that. That was my trick at Series XM as I was middle
aged manager who is also expected to be at his desk at eight am.
I can't be at the truckle huntil one on a Tuesday. Yeah, exactly,
we've got we've got a bunch of Yeah, right, you can probably
fill in more of this, but yeah, we've definitely got a bunch of
people that then do that Laura over in the UK and several people will go
out and do the same over here. A lot of our relationships just come
from the long standing history we've had with agents and managers that will be able
to send us like, hey, this makes sense, but you check her
out and as we've grown as a company, if it makes sense for us
and them, and then we put it through our own role, our own
process, vending process, and then it goes from there. But Ryan,
you could probably expand a little bit more on what's happening in Nashville and us
New York. And yeah, there there's a lot of younger people on the
staff that stay out later and they're going to the shows I know, Katie,
And our office is up in New York once a month just going to
the seller and the stand and things like that, looking at the talent.
And then we have folks out in LA and keep us informed there. A
lot of it does come from managers and agents or artists recommending other artists.
We get a lot of that, but it's got to go through do we
like this, Is this something we're jazzed about, because if not, then
we're not going to help the artist. You know, once these things come
in through those filters, then you run it through. Is this get anyone
excited here? And someone's got to champion it through for us to work on
it. It's really important at a generic level, what would be something that
excites people. I'll go first. I was watching some specials over the weekend
and there was one that I watched on YouTube. It's not one of yours,
and it was fine. As a bit of a comedy snob, I'm
like, this is fine. This is a comedian doing an act and it's
fine. And if you need an hour of comedy, it's fine. I
don't it. I don't hate it. It just is, whereas other specials
will just really make me go, oh wow, So how do you what
is the subjectiveness of Okay? This is one that gets through. Yeah.
That's why it's really important to have a little bit of diversity in the office,
because not everything I'm gonna find funny that Katie finds funny. I think
that's really important. And once you put enough stuff out, if we put
up everything I like, it'd be a pretty boring site, I think for
most people. So you've got to be trying a whole bunch of different things.
And if something really tickles Marcus or Katie or Mick on the team or
Evan, Damie and so on and so forth, you're then and they're going
to tell the team. This is why I like it is why I think
it's important. Then you get the data on the back end, and the
data on the back end is going to tell you, Okay, this is
working, this isn't working, and it's important to listen to that. So
it's this combination of what do we like as a group, what are we
thinking needs to be heard, and then what's the audience saying about that,
and working that blend constantly. I think is really important. If you have
one scout, it just doesn't go good because there's all different kinds of things
that make people laugh, is what I've learned. I think that's smart.
When I ran Serious XM Comedy, I really believed in having a diverse staff
in all ways, and an important one was age. So when I started
there, I was probably I don't know, thirty four or so, and
I remember telling the staff that we had to be careful that we didn't age.
Back then, Jim Brewer was doing Afternoon Drive and I said, I
don't want us to go twenty years later going hey kids, Eddie Murphy and
denim jackets and rock and roll, right, because you just you wake up
one day and you're really old. So I would always pay attention to the
kids just out of college and what's going on. Because it's very easy to
sit here in an old man mountain and go, matt Riife, I don't
get it, but somebody clearly does. Yeah. Yeah, six twenty seven
million views. It's one of the highest few comedy specials of all time.
So it doesn't really matter what we think about it. The audience has spoken
and they like it, and what do you do with that information? You
are absolutely right, and so we've got to be listening those people I just
mentioned earlier, they're all pretty much out of college, so we try to
listen to the younger folks as much as possible. Yeah, and with that
diverse catalog too, you get if you're talking about YouTube specifically, you've got
specials next to specials that the audience is just they're not going to find both
funny, right, and so yeah, different funnels coming into your channel,
and it's really about that recommendation algorithm, and even on our website as well
as someone coming in to buy a specific title, how can we position something
that we know that they're going to like. And that's where the data comes
in, and we have way more control over putting the right thing on our
own site than we do to YouTube's algorithm, although it's fantastic, but it's
just a dance of how how to get the most out of both platforms.
Yeah. I remember working with the comedians the New York brick wall cigarette smokers
don't like the La All scene, and neither side likes the blue collar guys
who were the nicest guys in the world and making more money than the first
two groups. It was just always this whole weird It wasn't like sports teams
or gangs. It was just like New York for U s LA. And
I guess now we're Austin's in the mix as well. Yeah. Yeah,
that's that's where Damien in our office and myself come from specifically, is the
we were out as promoting comedy promoters back in the day with Blue Collar Comedy
Tour and Larry Cable Guy Fox where they all this and really that's what opened
my mind is someone that wasn't in that scene specifically, and I'd go out
and I see the amount of people that come out. It's undeniable and it's
just complete overlooked market and it's I don't know. It just really opened my
eyes about different things out there and how they could really excel. I want
to hear more about that. I put together Blue Collar Radio for serious and
the first time I met the guys, it was down in Nashville, and
I asked them, don't be ip me. I don't want to sit in
the second row. Put me up in the upper deck and I'm taking notes
there, mental notes, And I remember the things that got big ovations were
y'all ever been to the Walmart? A Jimmy Buffett reference and Elvis reference And
it really helped inform me on how to program that channel and go right down
the middle where Series XM Raw Dog was. If it were a person,
maybe it would be Bill Burr, Hey, go f yourself, But Blue
Collar was God, Flag, America, Chevrolet, Chick fil A, whatever
you want to put in that category. It was just it was a different
vive. What did you do with the blue collar guys? So we promoted
us with outback concerts at the time, and they that was really the premiere
tour that we did and went everywhere with it. And really it is how
we worked with other acts and comedians and even you know a lot of music
bands and stuff like that as well, where we would take one artist,
and then we would tour and we would we book and rap the tour,
and there was a level of familiarity between us in the act, so they
knew what they were getting through. The deals were easier, we knew the
right markets to go to and everything like that. And so through that,
just getting thrown into the fire out on the road like that, finding these
little towns I had never even heard of and seen ten thousan fifteen thousand people
showing up, it just blew my mind. I'm like, where is everybody
else? Like where, why isn't anybody else doing this? It's and it's
there are good people, it's a good show. It made a ton of
money, and it's just fascinating. So then you just take that that all
that knowledge you learn and try to apply it to what we're doing today.
But it's not just the blue collars, sub subpopulations of people that are underserved,
and is how do we connect those people and how do we identify them
and then how do we give them exactly what they want, when they want
it, and on whatever platform they wanted. That's what I took from that
previous life. Yeah, I remember those days, That's when these days Andrew
Schultz plays Madison Square Garden and we could walk down the street and ask one
hundred people and maybe three out of one hundred would know who Andrew is.
And I'm not dissing Andrew. It's a different time. But twenty years ago,
that Blue Collar tour, that's when we started to really see the size
of arenas ramp up. I remember I was doing prep. The bosses were
asking me, it's serious. All right, we had a clean channel and
a dirty channel. What else could we do? And I started noticing all
the ticket sales on southern comedy or blue collar is what I meant, And
all right, we started looking at that, and then we went down different
genres and we did the deal with Jamie Fox, the one we could never
figure out. I was regularly asked to do it, and I just couldn't
solve how to do just at the top level term Latino comedy, just because
of the different genres of people speaking Spanish or Spanglish. We could never really
figure that one out. Yeah, talking from that period of the career,
we had a similar type when Russell Peters was coming up and we were another
huge, huge, But depending on which hundred people we asked, we might
go ninety nine out of one hundred or three out of one hundred, but
he's huge. You're absolutely right. But when we were going out, when
he's just starting doing theaters in the US and out of the clubs, and
it's about identifying that population that really his stuff resonates with and then it just
expands from there. It's and that's exactly the principles we use right now,
is you put the right thing in front of this this audience, and they're
going to come and they're going to love it, and then you learn a
lot about those that audience and how to get how to serve them. But
yeah, yeah, absolutely, Joe Koy unfortunately best known right now for I
think Taylor just murdered him. Is the way I phrased it on the podcast.
If she would have just smiled at the joke and just went ah,
it would have been fine. But the story just became Joe Coy Bond of
the Golden Globes, and he deserves better. But he's another guy that just
just playing these huge arenas. Yeah, and it's say one of the things
that to tie back to Australia from the beginning is when we I think Schultz
had just been there and did eight nights. Theovont did six in arenas over
there, and that blew my mind and you start thinking about I mean,
it's the power of the podcast and that speaking directly to these people that are
going to come out and support you. But I could not believe the amount
of tickets they saw down there, And it was great to see because we've
been working with Scholtz for a long time and just it's fascinating how quick that
can happen. You're so right about the power of the podcast theo Tim Dillon
Quiet Master, which is fantastic. I love that you guys are doing comedy
albums here in twenty twenty four. What's the business of that. A lot
of other labels have pulled back over various royalties fights. As I mentioned,
I programmed series for ten years. I currently handle the comedy properties on Live
one, and there's a lot of times not the depth of the librarya that
used to be available because people have pulled things back. As a programmer,
I love the discovery aspects, so I like what you guys are doing and
having more lesser known names or new faces might be a better term. So
what is the state of the comedy album and are we doing physical releases or
other than maybe a vinyl to be cool? Is that business dead? Is
it all Apple? Yeah, let's start with physical. If an artist like
a Tim Dillon who's going a big podcast wants to do a physical product like
a vinyl, we're in on that conversation. It's all about audience and what
is the appetite in that audience for that product. We don't do a lot
of physical though. In fact, in many cases we'll give those rights back
to the artists to do their own physical just because you know, they need,
they like product to sell at the end of the shows. And why
are we keeping track of that and sharing pennies with each other. It's let
them have it. It's a moment anyway for the artists to meet the fan
and to have an interaction. We don't do a lot of physical unless there's
audience there. With digital, you know, Serious is still a major player
in that. Spotlight feels like Pandora paused everything for the time being. And
then Apple has put forth a lot of interest in comedy. They're not sure
what their strategy is, but they're interested in this genre. So there's a
lot of conversation around that right now, and then Spotify has just been yeah,
we'll put it up kind of thing. And then Amazon, I just
wish, I wish Amazon would jump into the space because they're a quiet beast
and they don't no one ever thinks about it, but they have quite an
audience and quite a lot of power. But we just don't see a lot
of leadership in these DSPs. And again here we are at this place where
we complain about it, like Apple and Spotify, the don't even have a
genre really, and to not even respect a genres is crazy to us in
twenty twenty four of an entertainment form that's growing double digits. We just went
back to our team and said, if we're not going to get the attention
we want, then we need to go build it and complaining. And so
that's what we've been working on, is filling the void of really what Comedy
Central left. When I was coming up, Comedy Central was the place I
was there every night, I could be there when it wasn't working, I
was watching Comedy Central. And it's been much what is happening, especially recently
with just pulling everything down, and so we were like that's still a need
in our society. Let's go do it. Let's go build that. So
we're building out an audio platform right now on YouTube which will be available is
available, but it's in beta right now with playlisting and things like that.
But we're going to put a lot of attention into that on YouTube, and
specifically YouTube because that platform is future proofed with whatever happens with litigation. It
has all the necessary tools in it already because they've already been down this battle
with music. And we're putting a lot of BED on YouTube and then we're
putting a lot of BED on our site. And so what we want to
be able to do is if you like comic acts, through data, we're
going to be able to figure out what the YZ is for you specifically and
then keep pushing you down to artists you maybe haven't heard before. And that's
the idea is discovery, right and once I get a few data points on
you, we could probably put a fourth joke in front of you and nail
it, but we need a little bit of data. So that's the idea
for the next eighteen months. As a programmer, totally get where you're coming
from. I always explain to folks, I got to play the hits to
bring him into the door. But once you get in there and you trust
us a little bit, and you trust the host or the brand, then
you can do the discovery and be like, Okay, now that you feel
that I might know what I'm talking about, here is somebody you haven't heard
of yet. That's super awesome. Yeah, the tools are finally available,
like for us to even be able to quantify on those data sets. So
that's where I get really excited. That's where EAM gets really excited because we're
total nerds. But if if we can figure out a few things about your
and what tickles you, man, that's going to be fun because then we
can put something right in front of you and you're like, I've never heard
of that? Have you heard of this? This is the best and that's
what we want more with the eight hundred pound gorilla guys in a moment,
don't forget. On Monday, that new podcast, The Artist a Killer's Canvas
makes its big debut. You like serial killers? That sounds weird? Yes,
I love serial killers? Shun Well, good for you. There's a
podcast about one. It's called The Artist a Killer's Canvas. It's out on
Monday. You can follow it in your favorite podcast app right now, especially
if you're an Apple podcast hit that plus you know it'll help climb the charts.
Nuts nudge and know what I mean? So one of your models is
pay what you want as a consumer? Do you mean it? What if
I want to pay you zero? Is it a dollar? What are you
hoping the price point is? What's the actual audience behavior? Now? Fortunately,
especially with YouTube and the generation's younger than me, there's been a good
culture of Patreon or tipping or buy me a coffee whatever. So I think
there is an understanding that we can't have endlessly free content and if you like
an artist, actually support them. So how is pay what you want working
for you? It's good it started out. It's something that we've tried and
really to get to have a chance to identify the super fan for the artists.
It's really what it's about. And we put titles up for a pay
what you want model, And I should just clarify it's not zero, So
there is a floor to it. Currently I think it's ten and then it
goes twenty fifty, one hundred. But what we've found is when we go
up and announce these titles, we know they're going to be on YouTube down
the road. So most of the time we'll be able to say, hey,
this video will be available on YouTube on a certain date. However,
if you want to watch it first and support the artists, support the comedy
scene, support want to have that early access to this that you can then
message the artists or talk to your friends about whatever, you have a chance
to become a super fan and pay for it. And what we've found is
when you put all that out, you're not doing any bait and switching on
it saying like you pay it and then now it's free. You're very clear
with it. The people that you get to buy during that the most valuable
people that you could ever have as an artist. And so that's really what
it's all about. And when there's other strategies that make sense, like Ryan
spoke about earlier about goyn straight to YouTube right away if you want tons of
numbers, but in essence you're getting that data right to Google. At that
point you'll never know who those rabid fans are. So this is just an
opportunity to be able to say here's who it is here. Here's who knew
it was going to come out in a month or two, and here's who
reached in their pocket and wanted to support you and be into that. So
that's really the where it came from. And the art like the fans want
to support these artists. That's the thing. This was all just a guess.
Like we didn't know. We started doing a dollar, we started doing
three dollars. We didn't know how this would work. We just tested and
tested and fans toiled us over and over again. This is important to me.
I want to spend money at it. And you would be shocked that
the number of people sent through one hundred dollars. I'm shocked. It blows
my mind. But it's like, I think these people want to see this
scene develop. They're happy that this product came out, and they want to
attach themselves to it. And I think where we're going with that is we
want to lean into that more. How do we bring the fan and the
artists together in a meaningful way. Those are some of the things we're working
on in twenty twenty five to get these projects made. Because we don't have
an endless bank account to go fund all these things, but some of them
need to be done, and so how do you choose them, and then
how do you bring in the fans to support it earlier. I think there's
a some calculus we could do on that and get really good at that and
make them a part of the process. Because I don't know about you,
but I've bought things online like kickstarters and things like that, and you get
to see it being made along the way, and I think there's something to
that. And I think there's a bond that's developed between the fan and the
artist through that process and it doesn't erode over time. It only makes your
fandom of that person better. Yeah. I think it's a lot like music
I used to love. And I'm so sad that it's at least on hiatus,
hitting in Montreal just for laughs and the new faces go up there,
reset my knowledge with twenty comedians that nobody knows, and then come back and
tell my audience about it and really champion somebody. I guess at the last
one two years ago, I came back thinking John Marcos Airesse won the night
and he just put something out over the weekend, and it's just there's somebody
I'm rooting for this person. I feel like I'm along for the ride.
They're not yet a household name, and I feel like I'm in there.
And we've seen in this culture on YouTube of the super chats. I'll watch
a quote unquote YouTuber and it's hey Joe in Saint Louis for fifty dollars just
for one comment. And on Old Man Mountain, I'm like fifty dollars to
text somebody what what? But that's the culture. So I love what you're
doing because it also allows uh the artist to get the material out there.
It's at some point we all have to pay rent, right, there's no
like free Comedy Society endorsing the arts. We all including this podcast. I'm
running commercials. This is a money making organization here, but I try to
place the commercials not mid sentence. It can be frustrating to watch a special
on YouTube. So there's two ways to go about it, or three ways.
One pay for the special and see it uninterrupted, and you're whether it's
through what you guys are doing or Netflix or Max, we're paying for this
content. If we consider a quote unquote free YouTube special with commercials in it,
did anybody bother to place the commercials with a marker, so at least
it's between chunks. There is nothing worse than a break coming mid sentence.
Yeah, yes, and having YouTube give you that ability is important too,
So yes, we want to work more and more with YouTube. They finally
recognize what we're doing, and we want to get really a lot smarter about
that. There's so much to learn. Every layer you get into that world,
it feels like, oh, there's another layer, and so I think
we're on our third layer now, and I just know how far it goes
to be honest. But the bigger you get, the sort of more things
that are available to you, and we want to get really good at that.
That's important. If you take a victory lap, would have been the
big successes so far? What are the names or the specials or the pieces
of content that would all be like, oh wow, those guys. Yeah.
I always start that conversation with. The greatest asset we have is the
team we've built here, where we've got a team around the country and around
the world that is the best in comedy right now, person here in markets
comedy is the smartest person marketing comedy in the world in my opinion, right
now, so it starts there again. Like these people develop these talents over
years, these sets over three years, five years sometimes and so they've done
all the hard work and all they really need is an honest partner that knows
how to extract the gold from it and then put that gold on specific platforms
and get it moving. So to take credit for Mark Norman's Out to lunchbsolutely
ridiculous. That was all Mark Norman. But did we know where to put
it and how to get it out there? Yes, and that helped.
That helped that career and we couldn't be happier for Mark because he's a fabulous
comic. So on and so forth. Though with we did some specials with
Nate that I think we're really proud of with Nate Bergozzi did Greg Warren,
Joe Zimmerman and Mike Fechion, and those have taken off and I think are
really impressive to see those comics out there in a big way now. It'd
be stupid not to mention Matt Rife and was the biggest thing of last year
and continues to be the biggest thing of this year. Angela Johnson, Michael
Yo has been a big one for US. Sal Volcano's new special obviously is
taken off, but it's the ones that you don't expect that really are fun
to see in viral. I've got one of those, Ryan that the Ferd
Brady would be a great example of it that for us, it's one of
the first ones we invested in over the UK. And if you're not familiar
with her, the Scottish Scottish comedian and we really didn't know how she would
translate to a North American audience, right, and we had licensed that to
the BBC in the UK and it did fantastic because she's been on Task Match,
she's a star and it was amazing being I think it was that last
fringe. Actually I was at the Monkey Barrel and she was in the green
room up there and she was looking because we had just put up her special
and on YouTube and for North America we had to block out UK at the
time, and her Instagram and YouTube, we're just or her Instagram was just
blowing up with all these people from Texas and she's in this She's like,
where are all these people coming from? And there she got all this surge
of fans when we dropped it over here and that was the most surprising and
exciting one because it's a fantastic hour. You should check it out. Power
and Chaos. But then such a great special and really, like Brian said
about Mark, it's all Fern and people were able to really witness her genius.
And she's got a fantastic Netflix special now and she's got a book,
she's been on test by all this stuff around her. It's just so great
to see. But how she resonated across the ocean really blew my mind.
And who's coming up that we should be excited about. That's on your upcoming
release roster if you can chare, We've got some great releases coming up.
We filmed a speaking of up and comers that were stand out at Fringe last
year, Pat Young and Dan Tiernan both nominated for Best of Friends. We
filmed them in a really cool spot in London, just this really special hours
that resonated throughout that whole festival that honestly was one of those things that may
have gone away Alvi coming was just such a nice opportunity to be able to
capture that and really looking forward to putting those out there in the world.
They're just they're wonderful and just something to build on for sure for the next
one. Those would be the probably the top two that I'm looking for to
releasing right now. Yeah, Also Josh Glance, that's gonna be a good
one. We've gotten Nick Swartzon's New Hour coming out, which would be a
good time. That's not really he's a known entity. Francisco Ramos another project
from him, which I'm really excited about. And then one of my personal
favorites is James Adomians never put out an hour that I know of, and
we've been on him for four or five years wanting to do this. He
finally committed to it, and so that'll be out in August. I think
the sixteenth is the date. I'm really excited about that because he's a voice
that has been left out of this scene for a while. He's been doing
so many things on television and whatnot, but stand up wise, he needs
to be seen. He's a freaking treasure for comedy. So I'm really excited
about that one. But there's so many. Just looking at this list,
it'd be unfair for me just to run down because there's just so much.
Yeah, and there's a great thing too about Australia too. There's a fantastic
the agency down there called Token and there's a lot of titles that they've shot
beautifully that are I have never been outside of Australia before or New Zealand,
and we're going to have quite a few of those releases coming out in August
and we're just continuing and building that Australian comedy audience that we've been working on
for a while. Stiose are really exciting too. As a consumer, what's
the best way to keep up Subscribe to the YouTube channel. I don't know
you probably are you subscribed to our new speed That Monday morning brief of what's
coming in the week. I find very useful. It's on our site.
You can sign up there at eight hundred PGM dot com. It hits your
inbox every Monday and it gives you everything from TV film to stand up just
anything comedy. It hits the highlights of what's happening in a week. That
way you don't miss things. And then the email list shoots out every Friday
with what's happening on that Friday and then during the week and some things that
are like we also have an imprint here called Clown Jewels, which handles all
the the classical comedy stuff like Bob Newhart and Bob Hope and Robin Williams,
those sorts of things, and I think that product has really grown a lot
lately. I think people Generation Z for some reason, it's really liking classical
comedy, which you wouldn't think makes any sense. But they love this oldest
new thing and we love serving it up. So having these older things find
a trip as well. I'm a big Bob Hope fan. I love listening
to just a standard appearance at a random army base. It's just the rhythm
of the joke where you don't need to know any of the specifics, but
hey, General Johnson is here. I bet he's just here for the free
hot dogs. It's just a joke, joke. Cope delivers it. It
gets a laugh. You don't even know what it means, but it's just
I love Bob, so that's awesome. Yeah, someone has to do this
work of preserving this stuff because it's just so important. We just love it.
I mean, is it the thing that makes who bunch of money now?
But it's passion all the way, and it needs to be preserved.
Yeah, I'm glad. Check it out. It's called Clomb Jewels. That's
an imprint we manage. If I'm an artist and I want to work with
you, how do I reach out to you? Do? I have to
have been doing this for more than five minutes, five years? What's the
process? So a lot of our stuff now comes through agents and managers,
but other comics when a lot of the comedian community wants to help each other
out just emailing us cold, yeah, you can do that, but it's
better if one of these acts come to us and says, hey, we
just did that with Blake Wexler, for example, Siamon said we love came
to us and said, I found this guy. He's great, Blake Wexler.
We need to do a project together, and we did. And that's
a really good way to come into the organization because now we're using his audience
to help this new comic who's up and coming at a phenomenal hour. So
that's really the best way. It's like anything, right, it's like anything
with relationships. If you intro me to someone, I'm going to get a
much warmer reception. Yeah. I just think that's a really great way.
Yeah, I can only imagine back in the serious days, I would have
this stack of CDs that would sit on the right hand of my desk,
and every now and then there'd be a Friday afternoon where all the work had
been done and I'd finally get to the pile. And if you were lucky
enough that I and I'm not saying that I'm anybody, but if you're lucky
enough that I had the free time and I picked up your CD and I
put it in and I hit play, you had four seconds of my attention.
Not that I'm a jerk, but just I'd hit play and was it
recorded right? Did you come out of the box with a good joke?
Did a coworker come in and distract me and I didn't hear your good material?
It's so hard to just cold call like that, is my point.
Yeah, relationships are everything. Yeah, And I think comics they see other
comics working hard and they finally get that good fifteen minutes and it's like,
oh yeah, let's make the intro. Let's get this thing going. It
is something that's great about the comedians as they like bringing younger guys along.
Now, sometimes somebody maybe has a shorter career path to super fame and the
jealousy kicks in. Another person used whatever shortcut in the media at the time,
and there's that jealousy there. But for the most part, if somebody's
out there just doing good work night after night, the guys in the middle
tier and the cooler A listers will really stick up for them. It's fantastic,
it's healthy. We get a lot of that, and I like that.
I like that way it comes in because then I've been seeing this guy
in the club for a long time and he's ready. The site is the
eight hundred Pound Gorilla and that's the YouTube channel. Anything else to plug You
guys have been fantastic and very generous with your time. I don't think I
don't think we need to plug anything. I just thank you for what you're
doing. Thank you for raising the visibility of comedy. It's our favorite art
form. We need it, not more than ever, especially going into the
November elections. Yeah, let's just keep growing the form and get these artists
raising up, the next wave, raising up the ranks, and they can
pay their bills. Thank you Ian Atkins and Ryan Bitzer for a deep dive
on the world of comedy. I hope everybody enjoy that back in the morning
with a normal episode. See you then,