The New York Comedy Festival brought together four leading industry figures for the Business of Comedy panel, moderated by Variety TV reporter Ethan Shanfeld.
Comedian Jeff Ross, festival founder Caroline Hirsch, talent executive Louis Faranda, and Emily in Paris producer Lily Burns discuss the most pressing issues facing the funny business, from the decline of traditional Hollywood gatekeepers to the controversy surrounding Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh Comedy Festival.
Read an edited transcript from the panel below.
Who are the best distributors for comedy?
Ross: Tom Brady’s Roast garnered 2.5 billion minutes of viewing time, making it the highest-rated special ever on Netflix. YouTube does that every day, but you have to manipulate the algorithm. To me, Netflix understands comedy very well. Similar to HBO when I started my career.
Burns: There’s no denying that Netflix is great in terms of viewership. But with so few networks, everyone thinks they can only make something on Netflix, and they can get lost in a sea of content. Being able to produce a show from anywhere (it’s a miracle), from Jeff’s point of view, if you have a hit show and that hit show is on Netflix, hundreds of millions of people are going to watch it. It has a much different impact than when it was a hit on Comedy Central.
What happened to roasts after Tom Brady?
Ross: There are a lot of B-list celebrities who want to get slammed. I want it to be like the Super Bowl of roasting. Tom Brady, I held out for three years. He retired, he didn’t retire, he got divorced, but then he decided to do it at the Netflix festival. Catching whales can take time. We have another festival scheduled for May and are confident we will be able to host a roast in the spring.
I don’t want to wear it out. My partner, Casey Patterson, is amazing. She’s sending out a list of all the celebrities and it’s amazing how many people want that. But I want it to have an Olympic-like atmosphere. Every year or every two years, a giant roast is held. The Roast was once a second-class citizen on television, a cable show on Comedy Central. Now we have an Emmy nomination behind the Oscars, Grammys, Tonys and Super Bowl halftime show. It became a cultural moment.
short story boom
Faranda: Everything is missing now. That’s today’s attention span. I think some of these videos are interesting. Two years ago, I would never have said that. However, there are some people who don’t get a lot of attention even when they perform live. But look at Benito Skinner. His videos are so hilarious that he now has a show on Amazon that has been a huge success. Funny is funny.
Hirsch: Whether it’s a short story or a long story, if the creators are doing good work, the comedy as a whole will be more exciting. Anything creative is good for business.
The decline of gatekeepers and mid-level comedy shows
Burns: For a long time, no matter what I was putting out, whether it was a YouTube video or a stand-up show, the end goal was a TV show. I don’t think that’s true anymore. There are many different ways to be successful in comedy, but it’s clear that live stand-up is at its peak right now. You can build a career by creating comedy or short films online. I’ve been thinking about how I can continue to create high-quality comedy that doesn’t fit into a 30-minute time frame.
Comedy Central is no longer functioning, IFC (no longer doing original comedy programming). It used to be that if you were able to appear on mid-level shows in your career, the world would get to know you. Without a farm team mentality, comedy wouldn’t work. It’s not like we’re introducing something new and weird (on TV) with different rhythms. If people have different fluency with the meaning of comedy online, we need to learn from that and find ways to translate it. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing the same thing over and over again.
Jason Alpert Wisnia
“Saturday Night Live”
Hirsch: In the early days of “Saturday Night Live,” they didn’t use any stand-up comedians. It was more of an improvisational player. Nikki Glazer had just hosted, so I said, “Nicki’s going to do really well. Let’s see how the rest of the show goes.” Stand-up shows bring instant talent to the show.
Ross: There’s no Oscar for comedy. In some ways, I think hosting SNL felt like Nicki’s Oscar win. If you kill that opening monologue, it’s a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th inning.
Riyadh Comedy Festival debate
Ross: I went to the Riyadh Comedy Festival. As soon as I landed, a 16 year old was waiting for me at the hotel with his mother. I was like, “This is exactly why I came here.” Not to perform for the royal family who never came to my show, who I’ll never see again, but to perform for my fans. To turn your back on fans who wanted to hear about American culture…to me, that’s comedy diplomacy. That’s why I’m on this earth. Being a comedian gives me a backstage pass to the world and allows me to see things I would never get to see. The crowd was great. Women dressed head to toe in burkas are laughing at a joke that will make people laugh tonight at the New York Comedy Festival. So for me it was life-affirming. I stayed two more days to go to a local comedy club and meet a great local Saudi cartoonist. Some perform in Arabic, others in English. It’s very sophisticated. they are very interesting. If I had just read everyone’s shitty comments on Instagram, I wouldn’t have known that.
Hirsh: The people who decided to go to Saudi Arabia, that’s their responsibility.
Faranda: The money they threw at those guys… As much as I don’t like it for my own personal reasons, I might have to sell my soul.
Ross: Why would you sell your soul? Kevin Hart gets paid a lot of money everywhere he goes. He must want to go. People want change until someone actually tries to do something about it. When we turn our backs on a people’s entire culture, they end up going the opposite way. They will come towards Iran, but not towards the West. There is nothing more healing than seeing people from different worlds laughing about the same thing.
Faranda: I completely agree.
Hirsch: I hope so.
