How Creators Transformed the Business of Comedy

The last decade has changed a great deal about how we consume content that entertains us—but few offshoots of media have been reshaped quite as drastically as comedy. The internet has taken a pick ax to the traditional career path for an ambitious comedian, changing their trajectory for good.

“Pre-YouTube, you’d hoard your material, hope people get the opportunity to see your special, then you’d go on tour. The other way to do it was get a job in Hollywood and turn that into selling tickets on the road,” Andrew Schulz recently told Colin and Samir. “There were tastemakers from TV networks at festivals who would scout for comedians, and then YouTube killed all that.”

Podcasting put another nail in the coffin. The prerequisite for an invitation to the Tonight Show used to be a killer set at the Comedy Cellar. Now the only cred you need for Jimmy Fallon to introduce your five-minute set is a successful podcast.

Big picture: YouTube and podcasts served as a power balance for traditional media networks and made the audience the only court of approval that mattered. But…there’s one part of comedy that has still largely been kept in networks’ power: the stand-up special.

“[The network special] is the Michelin star that makes you go to the restaurant,” Schulz said.

Some context: By getting a streamer or TV network to produce and distribute your special, you’re gaining social proof. That’s why Andrew Schulz agreed to a four-part Netflix special called Schulz Saves America, a streaming version of the Instagram and YouTube rants that became popular over the pandemic.

• “We did the Netflix special not for the numbers or the money, we did it because it qualified us in a certain space,” Schulz said.

• “I understood that the co-sign from Netflix could change the perception of everything that we do.”

Before his Netflix special aired in 2020, Schulz had 1.4 million YouTube subscribers and 1.1 million Instagram followers, but he had yet to debut on a major media distributor. When the special aired that December, it bolstered both his IMDb and his social clout.

But even since 2020, getting the nod of approval from the media big leagues has evolved. So when it came time to release his next special, Infamous, Schulz wasn’t as beholden to getting a streaming deal.

“How do I make back the seven figures I was paid to do [Infamous]?” Schulz asked Colin and Samir while he was debating how to sell the special.

He ended up shopping it around to streaming platforms, eventually landing with Amazon. However, he backed out after they asked to remove some jokes. Schulz ended up producing and distributing the special himself, charging $15 for it on his website. In the first day of the special’s release, he made $500,000 in sales and ended up tripling his investment.

It’s an increasingly common strategy: Jared Freid, another comedian who has made a name for himself over the last decade with multiple podcasts, a Betches column, and a touring stand-up routine, is co-producing and releasing his first taped stand-up special with Betches (the tickets are already sold out). They haven’t disclosed which platform they’ll release the taping on, but they have no shortage of options—maybe to Betches' 9 million Instagram followers, Freid’s YouTube and website, or all the above.

While Schulz and Fried look to have taken a remarkably “new” media approach, there’s a point to be made for striking the middle ground—take creator and comedian Amelia Dimoldenberg, for example. The Chicken Shop Date host got her start through a magazine column and gained traction by promoting clips of her YouTube videos on meme accounts like YoungKingsTV and ImJustBait.

"I think that the online world of comedy has just created a different way to consume it rather than replacing traditional set-ups,” Dimoldenberg told the BBC. "I do think that if you want to be hyper successful in today's landscape you must master them both."

Our Take

The successful future comedian is the same as the successful future creator—a triple-threat: able to produce, shoot, and edit, able to do it for long-form and short-form, and able to perform live for an audience–whether offline or on. As comedians and creators learn from each other (see: Schulz’s recent content with legacy YouTubers Casey Neistat and MrBeast) the fight for legitimacy will continue to be merited more by the audience than by the network gatekeepers.

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