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Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

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Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#41

Post by someinternetguy »

yan wrote: post #5
aspir wrote: post #3

This most important piece here is that he's already broken even. Wow! I'd love to see the numbers comparing a Comedy Central production and Louis' self funded production. I bet there's countless areas of negligent spending in the CC production.

First, I think what Louis is doing is amazing and am a huge fan. Having said that however, how many other comedians can pull this off? He has a very large, very dedicated audience. Likewise for music. Trent Reznor can pull off very successful self-productions, but he's also Trent Reznor. The question is, how can you make this model scale down to lesser-known acts?

I think it all comes down to marketing and advertising. In the end you may not make as much with an HBO/Comedy Central special, but would anyone know who Louis CK is without these?

It's more of a branding thing with the specials and getting your name out there. It may not payoff up front, but the deals that come after it (such as Louie, the TV show) make it well worth it in exchange for the money lost.

The trick isn't really building a platform for smaller indie people to do these sort of things, that's easy and already available widely. The trick is building a service where these smaller indie people can make it big without having to go through the big players like HBO/Comedy Central first. YouTube is on the right track and Pandora/Spotify seems to be doing this for music, they just need time to growth, because as big as YouTube is, it still doesn't have the weight and advertising ability that a channel like HBO/Comedy Central has. As the ability to sift through the junk becomes better and better via analysis of social cues/demographics, it will be easier for these sort of simple "I don't care if you pirate because it's cheap enough" models to take off for smaller people. But at that point YouTube or whoever fills that gap just becomes the next HBO/Comedy Central and the cycle repeats.

Bottom line is there's always going to be a "big wig" who owns almost all the eggs. For standup comedy it's Comedy Central and HBO. If you can make it there you're set. Maybe someday it will be the YouTube comedy channel, but someones going to always come out ahead and being the leader means you can set your own price on what you wish to pay (as HBO/Comedy Central has done here).

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#42

Post by SODaniel »

snarkyturtle wrote: post #13

Except people don't do Comedy Central specials for the money, they do it to get exposure. Heralding C.K's success is like how people praised Radiohead for releasing their album independently. He already has a rabid and loyal fan base, but that's after working the comedy scene, writing for big shows, having stand-up specials on HBO. This article makes it seem like anybody can generate their own material, promote it an…

I refuse to be described as a 'Rabid' fan. Mangy? Yes. Creepy? Certainly. But Rabid? No sir, that I am not.

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#44

Post by ambirex »

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #36
yan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I think what Louis is doing is amazing and am a huge fan. Having said that however, how many other comedians can pull this off? He has a very large, very dedicated audience. Likewise for music. Trent Reznor can pull off very successful self-productions, but he's also Trent Reznor. The question is, how can you make this model scale down to lesser-known acts?

You start by spending years on the club circuit, developing your material, honing your craft, and building an audience by releasing content that your fans can share. In the short term, you make money from performing. In the longer term, you reach a point where you can make money from selling recordings.

It sort of reminds me of Kevin Kelly's 1000 True Fans ( http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fan... )

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#45

Post by pyre »

ColdSnickersBar wrote: post #39
pyre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point the parent was making is that all it takes it one person stripping the DRM and the content is on the Internet (torrents, usenet, private ftps, etc). It might not be easy to share person-to-person (for non-technical users), but if one just searches the Internet the content would be there somewhere.

Non-technical users are almost every single user in the world. So, if DRM prevents just those people from being able to simply email a video to a friend, then it actually is preventing most "pirating".

It prevents person-to-person sharing for non-technical users of the original content. The real question is: How hard is it for a non-technical user to find and download a pirated version from the Internet?

It's the difference between:

  Hey! This track is awesome lemme email it to you.
and

  Hey! This track is awesome. Google for a pirated version
  of it!

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#46

Post by Ryanmf »

someinternetguy wrote: post #41
yan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I think what Louis is doing is amazing and am a huge fan. Having said that however, how many other comedians can pull this off? He has a very large, very dedicated audience. Likewise for music. Trent Reznor can pull off very successful self-productions, but he's also Trent Reznor. The question is, how can you make this model scale down to lesser-known acts?

I think it all comes down to marketing and advertising. In the end you may not make as much with an HBO/Comedy Central special, but would anyone know who Louis CK is without these? It's more of a branding thing with the specials and getting your name out there. It may not payoff up front, but the deals that come after it (such as Louie, the TV show) make it well worth it in exchange for the money lost. The trick isn'…

Nitpick: I agree with much of what you've said here, but as it pertains to Spotify, the majors have them by the balls, and the financial predicament that puts them in likely has some influence on their outrageously low payout rates which are steadily alienating musicians, independent and "signed" alike. (As an independent/amateur electronic musician, one of the qualities I look for in a distributor to get my music on iTunes, etc. is "does not submit songs to Spotify.")

I suspect that the type of solution you've described may work, but in its current incarnation, Spotify aint it.

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#47

Post by sahillavingia »

johnthedebs wrote: post #14
yan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I think what Louis is doing is amazing and am a huge fan. Having said that however, how many other comedians can pull this off? He has a very large, very dedicated audience. Likewise for music. Trent Reznor can pull off very successful self-productions, but he's also Trent Reznor. The question is, how can you make this model scale down to lesser-known acts?

The best way to scale this down to lesser-known acts is to reduce the barriers to entry for both the comic and the audience. More specifically, if comics had a free service or tool that allowed them to set a price, upload some content, and have a promotional site like he had for his show it could work wonders. YouTube does this pretty well, but what he's done is much better (though there's a lot of benefit to having…

You're describing a solution I'm spending my life trying to make happen! I'd love your feedback on it: http://gumroad.com — I think this is a huge need.

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#48

Post by danso »

scythe wrote: post #26
yan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

re: DRM, I wouldn't call it a factual error. The article didn't imply that it's not possible, it just said it was harder. And I'd argue stripping DRM (no matter how easy it is) is, is in fact harder than not bothering. re: Popularity, I thought so too, until I had to wait on a long, long line to see him in Caroline's over two years ago. I was lucky enough to snag tickets to the Beacon theater show (that he's selling…

>And I'd argue stripping DRM (no matter how easy it is) is, is in fact harder than not bothering. But it's never, ever, necessary, not when gazillions of scene groups strip DRM from a work and upload it as soon as it hits the market, if not before; sometimes they just get hold of the studio version. It might make some obscure video games harder to pirate, since it's much harder to strip DRM from code than from data,…

You may be correct that DRM makes it "no harder to pirate that same content"...but it DOES make it harder for people to transfer files to each other through email/CDs/USB keys.

To you, it may seem trivial to load up a torrent program and spend some of the day browsing the trackers, but this is not at all trivial to the average person.

Think about it...DRM can be circumvented on iTunes music by burning it to a CD, giving someone the CD, and then ripping that CD. Or just burning to CD and ripping to your own computer and THEN distributing the files. Yet iTunes has been a huge success because people either do not realize this or because the few extra steps is not worth the effort.

Small extra steps make a huge difference between what is theoretically doable and what people actually tolerate doing.

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#49

Post by jrockway »

xer0 wrote: post #22
smackfu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FX is the home of non-mainstream comedies.

Anything on TV more widely available than public access is, almost by definition, mainstream. Even the non-mainstream shows are mainstream, their selling point being that they're "non-mainstream." If a show doesn't make big dollars for the network, it doesn't get on in the first place. Almost everything you see and touch today is mainstream, and if you think it isn't, it's because it's been marketed to you as non-mai…

I don't think that's quite fair. Some shows are more obscure than others. I'd use Parks & Recreation as an example of a "marketed as non-mainstream" show. It's not as popular as The Office, sure, but pretty much everyone has heard of it.

Louie is a bit different. Most people haven't heard of FX, and of those that have, most people haven't watched Louie. So while not obscure like "one copy of this book was ever published", it's not "mainstream" like Seinfeld.

Re: Louis C.K. "I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special"

#50

Post by dmd »

pyre wrote: post #45
ColdSnickersBar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-technical users are almost every single user in the world. So, if DRM prevents just those people from being able to simply email a video to a friend, then it actually is preventing most "pirating".

It prevents person-to-person sharing for non-technical users of the original content . The real question is: How hard is it for a non-technical user to find and download a pirated version from the Internet? It's the difference between: Hey! This track is awesome lemme email it to you. and Hey! This track is awesome. Google for a pirated version of it!

Most people I know outside of programming circles would find the latter to be WAY too much bother.
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