🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Full Transcript
Caloroga 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 Ca…
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’r…
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…
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…
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…
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,