Inside Jokes
March 3rd, 2008 by Alec McNayrPosted in Business, Comedy, Content |I’ve said it for years.
All jokes are inside jokes. You’re either on the “inside” or the “outside.”
Bad stand-up comics might be bad for a number of reasons, but most commonly, it’s because they can’t duplicate the experience of sitting around with friends at a party, just riffing and having a good time. They can’t turn the audience into their friends.
When we did Flipper Nation, it got huge response from real estate professionals, but MySpacers hated it. Go figure, 14-17-year-olds weren’t “in” on the joke. They didn’t care about real estate. But real estate agents and mortgage brokers did. They were automatically in our inner circle.
What I’m saying is: all comedy is niche.
And the Internet makes niche a financially viable business model. Finally, you can reach sizable numbers of people with your super specific content.
Reel Pop shares the sentiment when it comes to ABC/Disney/Stage 9’s Squeegees:
“Why treat online video like TV? Why create something meant to appeal to a broad spectrum, when what the Web does best is coddle small(ish) groups of devoted viewers?”
That’s a huge shift in thinking for such a large media company. Over the past few years, TV and “broad” media is continually competing with more nimble (read: more immediate and personal) types of content for viewers’ time and attention. Perhaps it should think of itself as increasing its relative value to a few viewers rather than shooting for lower engagement across a larger field.
If the future of media is “inside jokes,” then broad comedies could be stuck on the “outside” of profits.
