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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"

#81

Post by tptacek »

JonnieCache wrote: post #79
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen him live a couple times, and he's gotten up on stage and joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room. I don't think he's hurting.

>joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room When comedians say things like this, it's almost always about manipulating their perceived status relative to the audience. That's why you'll see him say the opposite in other situations. It's all just playing games with status. To make different bits work, comedians either need to be perceived as higher or lower status than their audience, to g…

That's why the bit worked (but, let's leave the frog gently steamed instead of boiled). But I'm saying, I don't think he was making that up. I think he was able to sell the bit because everyone, himself included, believes it to be fundamentally true. Which very simple math corroborates. The first Louis CK show I saw was at the Vic, a tiny theater, which sold out 1000 seats at $35+/ticket on a two-show night.

The second show I saw sold out the Chicago Theater on another two-show night.

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

#82

Post by philwelch »

gospelwut wrote: post #57
scythe wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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,…

For you, maybe. I've found AAC being proprietary is enough to make people buy iPods. Hell, I'm pretty sure you can convert it to MP3 within that piece of shit iTunes.

AAC isn't proprietary, at least not any more than MP3.

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

#83

Post by nostromo »

tptacek wrote: post #31
funkah wrote: post #27

I was surprised that he revealed yesterday in the reddit thing that he has never owned a home or had real financial security. I'm enough of a fan to know that he is definitely not rich from comedy, but I somehow figured he had made enough to own a home outright at least. FTA: "And a friend of mine who does torrent stuff a lot says that when torrent users do buy something, they act like they're doing the greatest thin…

I've seen him live a couple times, and he's gotten up on stage and joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room. I don't think he's hurting.

A little Googling led me here (http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/richest...) which estimates he's worth about $6.5mm. Who knows if it's accurate.

The "It's Always Sunny" guys as a comparison (also FX) do quite well, despite being obscure. As Louis does more seasons, I suspect he'll also become quite wealthy -- he's the only real 'talent' on the show that he stars in, writes, and directs -- which brings his share of the proceeds up dramatically.

He's really a shrewd businessman, despite the jokes about being poor (which are based on his personal experiences, so I wouldn't call them dishonest).

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

#84

Post by JonnieCache »

tptacek wrote: post #81
JonnieCache wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room When comedians say things like this, it's almost always about manipulating their perceived status relative to the audience. That's why you'll see him say the opposite in other situations. It's all just playing games with status. To make different bits work, comedians either need to be perceived as higher or lower status than their audience, to g…

That's why the bit worked (but, let's leave the frog gently steamed instead of boiled). But I'm saying, I don't think he was making that up. I think he was able to sell the bit because everyone, himself included, believes it to be fundamentally true. Which very simple math corroborates. The first Louis CK show I saw was at the Vic, a tiny theater, which sold out 1000 seats at $35+/ticket on a two-show night. The seco…

    * Booking the venue
    * Paying the venue staff
    * Producing marketing materials
    * Doing the actual marketing
    * Transport
    * Hotel
    * Transport for the support acts
    * Hotel for the support acts
    * Fee for the support acts
    * Fee for the support acts' agents
    * Insurance
    * Agency fees
It adds up. Obviously I don't know anything about his finances, maybe he is actually stinking rich, all I'm saying is tours like that aren't necessarily as profitable as they might first appear.

Then of course the money he does take might have to support him and his family through months of zero income while he writes new stuff.

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

#85

Post by BeSublime »

I was listening to this today to and from lunch, and can't wait to catch the whole thing later. I wanted to share it with the redditers and imgur LCK fans, so I'm glad its this high on the HN list because that means they've probably are all reading/hearing it like I'd hoped. I hope it continues to get spread and discussed.

Unrelated note: Awesome to hear that he listens to Fresh Air regularly. More people need to know that NPR and APM aren't just for weirdos and boring old folks. I'm 27 and love NPR, and although I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it in high school, I do wish I had discovered it wayyyy earlier in my life.

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

#86

Post by S_A_P »

chris_gogreen wrote: post #78

What exactly does he mean he's never seen a check, he does TV specials for free?

it means that he gets paid a small advance, does the show, and then the networks collect all the dvd and merch sales and dont give him any royalties...

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

#87

Post by antidaily »

nostromo wrote: post #83
tptacek wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen him live a couple times, and he's gotten up on stage and joked about how much more money he has than everyone in the entire room. I don't think he's hurting.

A little Googling led me here ( http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/richest... ) which estimates he's worth about $6.5mm. Who knows if it's accurate. The "It's Always Sunny" guys as a comparison (also FX) do quite well, despite being obscure. As Louis does more seasons, I suspect he'll also become quite wealthy -- he's the only real 'talent' on the show that he stars in, writes, and directs -- which…

He hasn't had this kind of exposure ever. A lot of people didn't know who he was until about a year ago. So I can imagine things are really starting to pick up. If he was struggling, he's not now.

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

#88

Post by johnthedebs »

sahillavingia wrote: post #47
johnthedebs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think I've seen Gumroad before (here on HN?) and thought it was an awesome idea. Just took a look at your other work and I've gotta say - thanks for building such great stuff!

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

#89

Post by tptacek »

JonnieCache wrote: post #84
tptacek wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why the bit worked (but, let's leave the frog gently steamed instead of boiled). But I'm saying, I don't think he was making that up. I think he was able to sell the bit because everyone, himself included, believes it to be fundamentally true. Which very simple math corroborates. The first Louis CK show I saw was at the Vic, a tiny theater, which sold out 1000 seats at $35+/ticket on a two-show night. The seco…

* Booking the venue * Paying the venue staff * Producing marketing materials * Doing the actual marketing * Transport * Hotel * Transport for the support acts * Hotel for the support acts * Fee for the support acts * Fee for the support acts' agents * Insurance * Agency fees It adds up. Obviously I don't know anything about his finances, maybe he is actually stinking rich, all I'm saying is tours like that aren't nec…

His overhead could be 70% and he'd still be taking home huge amounts of money for every tour.

He's selling out shows and has been for at least ~4 years now. If the tours weren't lucrative, he'd raise the face price of tickets.

Sorry, I just don't buy the idea that Louis CK is anything but "pretty wealthy" at this point in his career. Which is great, because he's one of my favorite performers anywhere.

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

#90

Post by mukyu »

jrockway wrote: post #2

One factual error that the article makes is that DRM'd content is harder to pirate. That is simply not the case; every piece of content ever released is easily pirate-able. The only thing that DRM does is hurt legitimate users. Also, I was kind of upset by the "letter" that the person who uploaded the torrent wrote. "Art is meant to be shared"? Why bother justifying it with something that sounds stupid when you could…

While it may be true that all DRM is pointless in an ideal world there are cases where it actually works.

Good counter-examples are Autodesk's products (their DRM/dongles stand up for 6+ months) or the PS3 that took years for people to be able to play pirated games.

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