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Caloroga Shark Media. Oh this one should be fun. Hi, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News and daily briefing on stand up comedy, comedians and the comedy industry. We got to talk about Game Iglesias, but first, hey, check in with a late night Jimmy Fallon reminds us the big story continues to be Iran as we’re in day four. When he told Joke of what the Pentagon is officially calling Operation Now What Michael Costa said, it’s definitely not expanding into an ever widening regional conflict that puts Americans in immediate danger.
Fallon again. President Trump took questions in public for the first time since he attacked Iran, and he admitted he has no plan for who should take over the country. Apparently he’s very close to listing it on Facebook Marketplace love It. Colbert said, they’re going to have to post the job on Indeed, the boasting supreme leader qualifications, charismatic, proficient in Excel, not deada plus Game Iglesias. Dude, you know I met Gabe once.
He was part of the launch of Comedy Central Radio. He was awesome, But Gabe, Gabe Gabe, Gabe, this is a bad look. Gabe Iglesias was at the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He got his star. Congratulations, well earned, and this is just a bad clip.
Here is Gabe Iglesias, my agent, Matt Blake. Matt has a book means around the Planet, and yes, yes he booked, means Saudi Arabia. I don’t care. Yeah, I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say. Fluffy is a sellout, Damn right.
I am a sold out Dodgers Stadium and Sofi Stadium, so say hello to that sellout. So on the one hand, I appreciate the honesty. Like Pete Davidson, who I still can’t believe played that festival. At least he was like it was a lot of money, and Gabe is just saying it’s a lot of money. And I get it, guys, but you know, most of the world, except for one cranky guy in his basement recording a podcast, has kind of moved on from this topic.
And Gabe, you just waved the red flag in front of the bull, and it’s just it was not a good look for you. Don’t do that again. That’s bad. Mark Maron was on Facebook he loved Chris Fleming’s new special. Have you watched it yet?
I’ve been trying to get you to watch it. I know I’m just a lunatic in abasement, but maybe you will trust the opinion of esteemed comedian Mark meron Here’s Mark, I made a couple edits for language. Chris Fleming I think is single handedly saving stand up comedy. Chris Fleming is a marvel to behold, A true artist, a true artist of improvisation, and just totally full of surprises and a bit of an edge. I watched Chris Fleming Special on HBO, and he gives me hope for comedy because for so long now it’s been so locked into the same boring frequency.
Of bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah, just. Like interchangeable comics. So when anybody pops out of that, out of what has become understood is stand up comedy and crowd work and everything else the same pattern. I mean, this guy like a rocket ship. Great, check out that Chris Fleming special.
Something new man finally, something new, real art, real stand up comedy. Just put them all to shame. No, I know you’re like Johnny Mack you never talk about Chris Fleming. Well, Chris Fleming is the guest on Caleb Hearing’s podcast. If you want to check that out.
Thank you Heather for sending that over. How about this for Scrubs, we got some updated numbers. I had telled you other ratings the other day, but then the modern metrics where they look at how it streamed in its first five days. New Scrubs tallied eleven point three six million total cross platform viewers in its first five days. That includes the audience for the original linear premiere.
Linear is network speak for what civilians would just call TV, as well as encores and streaming across Hulu, Disney Plus and digital platforms eleven point three six I imagine if it hasn’t already by the time you hear this, I imagine that show will be picked up for a season two and then we can get more Doctor Cox. By the way, someone in my house we have Hulu and there’s an account clearly labeled Dad’s account, and then the other family members have their own accounts on the master Hulu account. So I sat down last night to watch the Scrubs and I’m watching it and I’m like, wait, this just feels like out of time. And I went back and my rewatch is the middle of season five, someone else in the families rewatch and she did cook a fabulous dinner. If you want to hint as to who I suspect it was, had my account in the middle of season two.
When I hit next episode, it just showed me a season two episode and I watched the whole thing, and then I was like, ah, wait what so I reset its season five flog in as yourself people, And while I’m ranting, can you how do I get my family off my iCloud. So I have two options. I could bail and create a sub account, but then I have to remake all my music playlists and I’m the one paying for the iCloud, or I kick them all off. Now, I have told the children when you turn thirty, and they’ve got some time. When you turn thirty, I’m kicking you off iCloud.
You get your own Netflix. I’m kicking you off everything. It’s not about the money. It’s about I want to log in hit play and Scrubs play season five. Although kicking my children off is not going to solve the Scrubs issue.
Then I mentioned she cooked a delicious dinner. In case you want to hint, who I suspect is logging in his me cut it out. Jim Jefferies was on The Life Without Andy Show and he was asked if comedy had a championship belt, who would hold it? Right now, now there’s a topic for a slow news day, which is not today, but the next time we have a slow news day, that is a great topic. Who holds the comedy championship belt?
To me, it’s pretty obvious, but Jim Jeffries threw out a different name. He said the current title holder would be Shan Gillis. He’s the one selling the most tickets. Well, as you’ll hear tomorrow, he’s not the one selling the most tickets. Nate forgets.
He’s the one selling the most tickets. Shank Gillis is the one that seems that the left and the right love the most.
And also he was canceled and he’s completely fine, you know what I mean.
But he would be the one that would be the biggest for ticket sales. Gabriela Glacias. No one sells more tickets than Gabriellaglacias. Man he sold Dodger Stadium twice, plus he sold out the Rio Comedy Festival, which bottom of a house. Yeah, I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say.
Fluffy to sellout, Jim said, I’m just happy where I’m at, even if I’m at the bottom of the table. I’m happy to be playing in the Premier League, and I could be relegated at any time. I love it. Taylor Tomlinson said, playing cruise ships are really tough because everybody’s coming to see you, essentially for free, just in another activity that’s available on the boat, and you’re not as good as a water slide. That’s hilarious.
Most people were there with their families or on their anniversary, and I was like twenty one talking about dating being weird. I usually did a lot of CrowdWork on cruise ships. The other comic that would be on with me, he’d have an hour about the cruise ship and I was like, oh man, I’m not good at this. I think those were the hardest for me. Churches, if you’re clean, they’re pretty nice.
We have to be squeaky clean. I’m not talking like send your transcript to the tonight’s show and have them reprove it. I’m talking insanely clean, no innuendo, no light swearing, don’t get too dark or too negative. But if you could stay within those parameters, as the audience tends to be supportive back at serious, I always had the hardest time programming the clean comedy channel. First of all, there’s not all that much clean comedy.
You would think that would be the easy one to do. No, the dirty channel is very easy. To do the clean channel. You have to find material, and then people like Bill Cosby, who were the bulk of your library, you know, kind of getting the news, and then you have to pull all the Bill Cosby clips out, and that makes life even harder. But as a rascally young man who grew up in New York City, I had a different feel for what for what is clean or not.
I eventually settled in on like Dolly Parton jokes, if you know what I mean, Like, there’s a way to do a Dolly Parton joke without saying anything. I kind of drew the line there, but boy, I kept having it dial the language back. There’d be words that would be like, really, you were finit that at okay, Folks did not like any sort of coded drug reference. So that had to come out. So I hear you, Taylor Thomason, She said, I could tell you when I was twenty one and it was opening for Big Church Comics.
It was like a thousand dollars a show that was hard to lose. At a certain point, I told my manager I couldn’t do churches anymore. She told the managers, just don’t even tell me if we get offers. The last one she told me about was like three thousand dollars for like thirty minutes. When you’re twenty two, I two TV credits and don’t sell tickets.
That’s pretty crazy. It’s a lot of money, but I couldn’t do it. They asked Taylor Thompson about Late Nights. You know, she walked away from the Late Late show. My personal conspiracy theory.
And again I can’t scream this loudly enough. I’m not blaming Taylor Tomlinson, but I do think Taylor Thompson walking away from After Midnight did open the door to a discussion of do we need any of this? Again, I’m not blaming Taylor Tomlinson. I just think it’s a butterfly effect. Taylor said, I can’t believe they canceled Cold Beer.
It’s interesting how the argument is, like nobody wants to watch people talk. People are watching hours of people talking on podcasts on YouTube and now Netflix. I’m doing all these podcasts and it’s so interesting too, because you’ve got to go to some studios. It’s a TV show. They have a team of eight or nine people, twenty lights, and a beautiful setup.
As for walking away, it was tough. I decided that I couldn’t come back before the show was renewed. It was sort of a muddy timeline because the decision had been made to be renewed, but I didn’t know about that, so it wasn’t as simple as they told us you being renewed and I went, no, thank you. That’s not what happened. From the beginning.
I was always like, if I can do both, I will do both. But reach a point where I was touring, I was doing press for the show, I was doing the show, and I had some hell stuff going on. I just couldn’t do both things anymore. I so badly wanted them to just hire someone else to host it, because I think there were so many comedians who would have been absolutely amazing hosts for that show, and it’s unfortunate that they didn’t go that direction, because in the two seasons we did, we got it to a format that CBS seemed to feel good about. It’s a very different show than one I saw non for and I was really happy with it and proud of where we all got it.
The hardest decision I’ve ever made professionally, by far, was not to come back for a third season. But I couldn’t sustain it. You know. That got me thinking, I wonder if they’ll bring that back, Like, could you just did eleven thirty, do a show called before Midnight and get a new comic in there and run that format because that one’s not that expensive to produce, Or do you just throw on CSI reruns and get the same number? Probably that the Hollerd Report said to Taylor, what was surprising is the format seemed like a workable evolution for late night.
Panel shows are less expensive and do well in other countries, and Taylor at it it was a great opportunity for comics to get in front of a new audience and get a TV credit and make jokes in a way that didn’t burn material on stage. I’m really grateful that I got to be part of it as long as I did. But when Colbert got canceled, it was like, holy cow, Really, how long would we have been on if they were going to cancel Colbert? You know what, Taylor, My guess is a long time. Comedy stock Markets.
Thank you, Burt Reynolds. You know I was on with the sales department the other day. This is a real thing that happened. They’re like, do you have any repeatable segments we get sponsored. I’m like, dude, comedy stock Market, where every Friday we look at the comedians and we try and find value when we buy low and we sell high.
Last week I was very positive. I was just telling you to buy bye bye. Today I have one buy one sell the buye. Let’s get some more Chris Fleming. You listened to me last week and you bought Chris Fleming stock.
Right, Your Chris Fleming stock is way up, and I think there’s a lot more upside there. So let’s buy some more Chris Fleming for my sell. Let’s get out high and gave a galazias. I just I don’t like the look. Again, I get it.
It’s a lot of money. But dude, you have a lot of money, and it’s just it’s not a good look. So simple comedy stock market today, we will buy Chris Fleming and we will sell Gabe A Galacias. Yeah. I bought a house with that money, so I don’t care what you say.
An article in Deadline as Netflix targets podcast comics weigh the risk of leaving YouTube, They point out not too many comedians have jumped to Netflix podcasting. Sure, there’s been a few notable exceptions, Chelsea Handler and The Workaholics, both coming through a deal with iHeartMedia. Netflix first commission in original was The Pete Davidson Show, but Deadline right still. Given Netflix’s outsize role in today’s comedy business, with the Comedy Festival coming up in May, many expected to see more comic driven podcasts bound for the service by now. Some sources have attributed the lack of comedians to the way the streamers structuring its deals.
As a license, Netflix does not have an official podcast boss. The deals are run through the teams of Laurence Smith, VP of Content Licensing and Programming Strategy, and VP of Nonfiction Series in Sports, Brandon Reeg. The Netflix podcasts have been required to strip their feed of new video episodes from YouTube, which stands in contrast to Hulu’s strategy. Hulu is windowing episodes so they premiere on Hulu and then they can go on YouTube the next day. Netflix pointed out there are audio fees for every podcast, so you can listen if you want.
What’s the big deal, a source is the price to engage with comedic podcast talent has been a lot higher than he believes the streamer expected. The quote, I don’t think they realize just how much money some of these talents are making when they are majority participants in AD supported revenue. Alan Abdean is the head of AD revenue and Partnerships at y m H Studios, you know, the company founded by Tom Sagora. His advice, regardless of how many millions of dollars are being offered, he would never advise talent to take a new captive audience at the expense of alienating the Cora audience that got you to where you are now. I’ll translate, you go behind the bay wall and a lot of people don’t follow you, he says.
You’re basically telling your community you’ll watch it where I tell you to watch it versus we’ll meet you where you live. He explained the money. You can have your ad sense those are like Google ads. You can have your host red ads. You can have dynamic and programmatic ads.
Dynamic ads or ads that you could swap in. So there are baked in ads like if I were to read you a commercial for say an iced coffee, if I bake it in, it means it lives in the episode forever. A dynamic ad is what you normally hear on the show where I like, clearly kind of take a break in the middle of the show, and then you get some commercials. Those are dynamic, and those are individually served to you based on your listening primarily your location. So if you’re in New Jersey, you’ll get some New Jersey based ads, and if you’re in suburban Vancouver you’ll get some Canadian stuff, et cetera, et cetera.
You can have dynamic and programmatic ads, you can have product placements, you can have brand deals, you can have clips. You’re condensing all that and known one number for Netflix, which I think probably changes the dynamic one executive wondered, Now, this is very very smart. This is the whole key here for comedians. The executive wondered, if Netflix feels like they can get your audience every week from your podcast for a relatively low price, are they going to then be incentivized to get your special or these bigger projects from you. An agent representing audio stars agreed, saying these concerns are top of mind.
It’s something that we’re discussing internally in a very coordinated way because we’re cognizant of the potential impact that it might have on other pieces of the business. We don’t really want to continue to be in a race to the bottom, right, So if you’re Shane Gillis and you throw your podcast up there, well, Shane’s on Netflix all the time, So what makes us special? It doesn’t. Boy, that’s really really interesting. We’ll see what shakes out.
Until then, I’ll be down here in the basement doing it myself. That’s your comedy news for today. Oh boy, all right, I’ll see you tomorrow.