Comedian Chris Gethard Talks To Mediaite About Finding The Future Of Entertainment Via Public Access TV
Gethard (continued): The paperwork’s actually pretty elaborate and you have to take classes to learn how to use the equipment and I feel like they kind of do that to make sure- I think they’re goal is, ‘We want anyone who has a show here to be serious enough to take all these classes.’ But a lot of the people are just insane enough to keep doing it, fill out the heavy amount of paperwork and take all the classes. But, at the end of the day, there’s a full television studio sitting there, a three-camera studio. And they allow us to train our own people to operate all the equipment and it was really a situation where this is some high level equipment and they’re still totally willing to let us do it ourselves. There are almost no content restrictions. We can say pretty much anything we want. There are rules about nudity but, even that, it’s sometimes allowed.
I guess I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock music and really having that sort of Do-It-Yourself thing ingrained in me and, ever since I’ve been doing comedy, I’ve felt like the things that I respect the most are clearly the things where people are sort of boxing out their own corner of the world and doing their own thing. So working at public access seemed like a real opportunity to put it in our own hands. Also, I think so much lately about the world of podcasting, how many people are getting these huge audiences via podcasting and it’s just so clear that people want to find comedy content on the Internet. I mean, you look at Marc Maron’s podcast which is so awesome and has found this huge audience. One thing that was a huge inspiration to me was The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling. Comedy nerds loved that podcast. I grew up in New Jersey with WFMU as a radio station. And I remember when Scharpling started the show and I used to listen to it and think it was really funny and, when they started podcasting and live-streaming all their stuff, I feel like it just exploded. It just to me feels like public access is sitting there, offering these amazing facilities, giving you the chance to do it all yourself. It’s kind of up to you and how hard you want to work and it’s up to us to utilize what’s available if we want to really push the online side of it. It just seemed like, why not just fucking go for it if we want to do our own stuff?
“Ever since I’ve been doing comedy, I’ve felt like the things that I respect the most are clearly the things where people are sort of boxing out their own corner of the world and doing their own thing. So working at public access seemed like a real opportunity to put it in our own hands.”
Mediaite: One of the things I thought was really interesting watching it is the way, since it actually is on TV, I mean you’re gonna have people who are going to thechrisgethardshow.com, and who know who you are, and then you also have someone who’s late at night flipping through the channels and has no idea what they’re seeing and has no idea that this is also on the Internet. It’ss that kind of interesting thing that I feel like doesn’t really happen anymore. Like okay, a YouTube thing will become viral in a day and go through every blog. But then you have, I imagine, people watching the TV and five minutes later they’re on Google and discovering that this is a whole thing that exists, this whole community, around the show.
Gethard: And my favorite calls are the ones that come from just like confused men, like bored men, in the early weeks, I think the first three weeks of the show, each week we got a call that was some version of just like “What is this? Why are you doing it?” But it’s all led to good stuff, like one of the people on the show now is this random girl we call Random Jean who just called up and was like, “Why, what is this? What is this show all about?” And we invited her down to the studio and now she just shows up every week and we put her on the air. And to me that’s like a fun, interesting aspect of things. It’s always interested me as a comedy performer — and I feel like I keep going back to the idea of — in modern times there’s just a lot of potential, like you can build a community, you can build a world, you know? It’s funny, MNM doesn’t keep ratings. So we have absolutely no idea how many people watch in Manhattan every week.
Mediaite: Yeah, I asked Dave [Bluvband, the actor who plays the Human Fish] what the ratings were and he didn’t know.
Gethard: Yeah, they don’t do it, it’s just not part of their mission statement to keep ratings, so it feels like we’re kinda just beaming this thing out into a void.
Mediaite: Do you have UStream ratings?
Gethard: Yeah we can see how many people are watching on UStream, we can see how many people are watching our clips on YouTube, and we’re gonna start podcasting soon and we can track all that. But the idea that we’re just putting it up on TV to all of Manhattan, however many millions of people have cable in Manhattan, is an exciting aspect of it. And they’re calling too. It’s very exciting and I do like what you said; if they’re interested they can Google it and go on Twitter and they can see all the people on the show who are talking about it to each other. And we get that now, we start to get people interacting with us and saying they saw the show. I’m starting to get ticket requests from people who didn’t know about the show from online or from the UCB Theatere. I got a ticket request from a girl this week who was like “I’ve watched your show the last three weeks and it’s actually really funny. I don’t see much other stuff on public access like it, I’d love to come.”
It’s just cool to realize how connected everything can be. And it feels like it’s on us to just sort of participate. For myself and for the other people who are on the show all the time, the more we invest in trying to participate on the online side of it the more of a chance we have in building this little world and this community, you know? In an ideal world I feel like it’s almost like I grew up loving Marvel comics, and the WWE, which have that feel of like “Oh my god, man! Spiderman showed up in the Avengers!” And then, you know what I mean, I almost want my show to be that. Like, “oh man the Human Fish is having a Twitter fight with Random Jean and then that guy George who was in the Whiffle Bat Gang! I didn’t even realize he was the dude who did Trash Hunt on the first episode and that guy’s doing a show here. And he also does a show with Don Fanelli!”
You know what I mean? I like the idea that people can start to realize like this is the tip of an iceberg with all these comedians are working today all over New York City.
