Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.152 | feat. Matt Read & Alex DeRosa from Spatchcock Funk!

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Spatchcock Funk on Building a Party-Driven Cooking Show and Community Host Matt Major welcomes Alex DeRosa and Matt Read, co-owners of Spatchcock Funk, to discuss their party-themed cooking show and content journey. They explain the name’s roots in a tailgating cooking technique (“spatchcock”) and music (“Renegades of Funk”), and how their ad-agency backgrounds helped them turn filming recipes and friend parties into segments on CNY Central and a PBS series airing in 50+ markets. The show’s format centers on themed parties (e.g., adult prom) with three recipes and a cocktail, aiming to inspire adults to reconnect socially and build community. They share party hosting tips (prep-ahead dishes and batched cocktails), guest advice, production logistics, and plans for ticketed events. They describe sponsor offerings, PBS product-placement limits, and Season 3’s local PBS premiere April 7 (Tuesdays 9pm; Saturdays 3:30pm), with episodes also on YouTube. 00:00 Welcome to the New Studio 01:20 Meet Spatchcock Funk 02:44 Origin of the Name 05:44 Standing Out in the Attention Economy 06:11 From Parties to a TV Segment 08:48 Community Building and Staying Consistent 14:37 What the Show Feels Like 17:14 Easy Party Food and Batched Cocktails 19:57 How to Be a Great Party Guest 21:19 Behind the Scenes Party Chaos 23:13 Season Format and Shooting Logistics 23:57 Building the Show Format 25:08 Logistics and Guest Wrangling 25:56 Ticketed Parties and Wild Ideas 28:59 Not a Catering Company 29:32 Fans Want to Party Too 32:13 Sponsor Value and PBS Limits 35:13 Creative Brand Collabs 38:49 Biggest Party Dreams 41:16 Where to Watch Season Three 42:55 Taking the Party on the Road 44:20 Final Thanks and Sign Off

Hey folks, welcome to Good News York. I'm your host, Matt Major from Clickstream Studios. We are here in our awesome, I don't even know what we're calling this, the gamer nerd, you know, our dream childhood studio here at the new ClickStream Studio space. We have an incredible new space for Good News York that we're going to start using. But I'm like, I'm like a perfectionist. And Danny's really getting annoyed because he's like, can we just start using the really nice studio? We built in the other room? I'm like, no, dude. We've got to get one. one more chair in there. But you're going to see that soon. In the meantime, though, we're doing some incredible things, and we have got a couple of gentlemen here that I'm sure you know. They're much more well-known than we are. If you have an inkling who we are, you definitely know what these gentlemen are. And I'm very excited to learn their story,

because not only the content creators, not only the local guys, but they've really found success doing some things that a lot of folks, I want to say dreamed of. I don't want to say have tried, because I think the biggest challenge is people don't try. Yeah. But you're living the dream, gentlemen. And without further ado, I love you, go ahead and introduce yourselves and tell us what you do.

Yeah, yeah. So my name's Alex De Rosa, a co-owner of Spatchcock Funk. Our show is really a way to hang out and throw parties with each other. I mean, that's where it started. It was like, how can we just hang out and do the things we want it? We are doing already, whether it was at the time, you know, throwing softball parties or throwing Halloween parties. we were doing it all and it was so much fun with our friends and now we're I guess getting paid to do it. Yeah.

That's incredible. That's the hope at least. Yeah. Well, we are getting paid to do it, but we're also, I don't know if we're good at making money. I mean, we're really good at spending it. Yeah. It's easy to do. You know, building sets and everything.

But I'm Matt Reed, the other co-owners, Bashcock Funk. And like Alex said, we wanted a really fine excuse to party with our friends. But there's things that we believe in, like creativity. cool spaces like this and some social justice messages. So how can we like, all right, we believe these issues and also we live to throw banger parties. And we built this community like y'all have done. And it feels really cool. But like you know, it's scary sometimes because every day you're like, oh shit, this is something new and cool. Or like we didn't think about that. So we're in a really cool growth mode. But just like this show, I think a lot of people seem like

that looks fun. And it is super fun. But you got to try. And then the hard work comes down the road. But you're right. You got to try. Anybody can do a lot of the stuff that we're doing. Guys, I got to know the burning question. Where did this name come from? Matt just wrote it on a piece of paper, and we picked it.

Now, we were honest, he did. He came up with a bunch of names, and the hope was to, so a lot of our cooking technique, there were Matt's cooking techniques and the style came from tailgating. So he would do like crazy, you know, roasting pigs or alligators or it was, It was non-unique. It was unique stuff that you would never eat at a normal tailgate. And so we needed a unique cooking term.

And then we wanted to mix our love of music and arts and culture. And so spatchcock is a little bit more trending now that Martha Stewart was spatch cocking things. But it's the way you cook a chicken, you know, even I can explain the exact technology or the term behind it. But the funk is rage against machine song, Renegate the Funk. And so that was a music's a big part. of everything we do. We just filmed an episode where we were at a recording studio, throwing a party for a band that was recording their album. Awesome. So like everything,

a lot of our crew goes to a lot of concerts together and a lot of these stories and ideas have been kind of formed at those events. So music, food, connected. And that's kind of where, and then Matt wrote it on a piece of paper and put the two words together. And we're like, that one sounds cool. Yeah. I remember we were flying to like Austin, I think, or Chicago maybe, when we came up with the name and we had this list. And I've said this to other people, like, one of the names, you get to think about our people going on, you know, now that we're on TV, are we able to get this on TV?

Like, I wanted the name, sex drugs and lobster rolls, right? And that's not going to fly. But when we think about naming stuff, like, we have so much fun in our job, like coming up with the names or ideas of stuff we're going to do. And we'll go back and forth on crazy ideas. But it surprises me, like the name Spatchcock Funk, which, you know, people can see it as a double entendre. There are a lot of times where Alex and I will have an idea and we're like, dude, that's not going to work.

And then all of a sudden people love it. Or we get away with it. Like it's really fun. And the name, I think, kind of speaks to that. Plus, it's memorable. Yeah. Like, if we're going to try to do a show or content in any way right now in this world, it's so hard. You have to be different.

Yeah. And the name has to be a little different to start. Sure. If they're flipping, you know, we're on PBS, so they're going to be flipping through whatever guide they're on. Yeah. And if they saw, you know, Matt's, you know, cooking show. or some generic name, they're not going to start. When they see Spatchcock Funk, they're curious.

Just like you're curious, what is this name about? What is it about? And hopefully they stay for a little bit. I love it. I love it. The play on words, too, like I think about, I'm a big, big fan of wordplay. And if you think about like Good News York, that's just, to me, classic quality wordplay. Sure.

Because people see it. They get it, and then they do a double take. Like, Alex was just talking about flipping through the channels. Like, when you see like pawn stars and these things, you kind of like, what? Is there something, you know? So how do you draw that in? And you guys do it well, but it's always the challenge, getting people's attention. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's it. And, you know, we're in, we keep saying, and with our content marketing clients, we talk about all the time, we're in the attention economy, right? And that's honestly the biggest thing that we try to promote that we offer is helping you get the attention that you need specifically online in our case. But talk to me a little bit, if you could, gentlemen, how did this go from kind of this idea and these things we like to do and we like to cook and things like that? did it come to actually making content and turning into an actual show? So Matt and I's background is in agencies. We both work to add agencies. Production has always been my background.

So more on the video side, Matt's more on the creative kind of leadership, copywriting side, but also we both cook and hang out with our friends. So in I think the period of time, we've talked about this for a couple of years, and our friends were like, you guys should do something like a tailgating show, or we should film this. And we're always like, yeah, for a while. like what are we going to do with it um and we would throw these parties with our friends and it would be Halloween right and we're like that was so much fun we have to wait another year to throw a

Halloween party let's do something else so we would throw another party we came up with this top six party you bring your top favorite six songs on a CD which was awesome or a flash drive and we're going to play it and there's going to be a list and you're going to learn about people's taste and music so we just kept coming up with it and at one point we finally we said let's go and film this and let's go film matt make a recipe let's just start it and And if we get some views, great. Matt, luckily, knows a lot of people, as is his wife, Stephanie. So we got a lot of views.

But they were people that knew us. So we just kept going, kept going. And luckily, we got, you know, I don't want to say luckily, because COVID was an awful time for a lot of people. But for us, it gave us the breath. And all. Thank God for COVID. Yeah. All the stuff we do, like we're busy.

Everyone's busy that it gave us a break to, like, focus on it. And it helped us grow it. And it got us on CNY Central, a local show, a new show here. A lot of the bad news in the world, they wanted a bright spot. And so we're still on it six years later as like a three, four minute recipe segment where we can do. And so that right there gave us the next step to say, okay, let's keep going now. Sure. We always had a TV show idea.

So we always wanted to do a bigger show. But this launch pad of the Sinclair stations really gave us like the proof of concept. after two years of making this in Matt's garage and like I don't know if anybody's watching this like we have we have no idea right you know it airs we just don't know and then you know we've been traditional TV it's not like all the yeah YouTube where there's a running counter right right so we'd be in public and Matt would get a lot of these and I would call them out saying that's not true but people would come up to them in grocery stores and want pictures and call in the face-time their parents and it just kept going going going and then I finally I think we're at the fair

and we were trying to grab a beer at the beer at the beer garden there and I think 25 people in a row came up to him and it was entertaining to watch so we had like that proof of concept that it was working and that I mean I can't change anything I can't adjust anything that Alexa said because it was awesome and that's true

that's how we got here but that proof of concept and community building is where it's at so we'll do like events now for that corporate clients or you know we've thrown parties and we had one we had 188 people there 40 people got real tattoos at this event. So we're seeing like it's past the groundswell stage now. We want to get more of that type of action. But we're seeing more and more of that. So it's a challenge, I think,

as you know here, Matt, like, how do you keep them up with something new, right? Because we had a great series. I think it was great because I wrote it. But like it was like a did you know thing, right? And we're like, oh, did you know this or that? And we had this one YouTube video that we're talking about nutmeg. And there were so many people responding to it. Like we were talking about before. Yeah. And we're like, great. And then all of a sudden, like we tried two more.

And it's like, wang, wang. Right. How do you come up with something different or new? It's hard. It is. And that's, you know, chasing that algorithm, that's always the wildest thing, right? Because, you know, I think the best and most common advice you hear from so many people is to not necessarily invent something new, but take from what is working for other people

or what's worked in the past and things like that. Make it your own. But do those things. But then you can do that, right? You can see, man, these people got. 8 million views by this concept, and I can make that concept, and you do a great job, and the video looks great, and cool, you got seven views. This is awesome.

And that's the game with it, right? And I think a lot of that comes to building the community like you're talking about. But today it's a unique challenge, because, as you guys probably know, social media has really now become more interest media. And it used to be all about, I have millions of followers, so it'll show my stuff to them. And now doesn't matter. You know, now the algorithm's just every individual clip per piece of content goes, who would like this? And it ideally tries to show it to those people, which can work in your favor, right?

Definitely. But again, it's just that whole, like you said, it's just continually evolving. And half the time you feel like, oh, I got it figured out. That's when the next day, same thing doesn't work again. But I think, you know, the most successful people are the ones who just don't stop. Yeah. And that's, you try to ebb and flow with it, and sometimes you hit it, sometimes you don't, but that just continuing to be there, in my opinion anyway, is really what separates the folks that continue to be successful, you know?

Yeah, we've had a lot of opportunities, which is awesome. And we always say, like, when you're busy and social media gets very overwhelming, like, it's the constant, and everybody deals with the constant pressure that you should be posting because something's happening or you should be posting all the time. and all the platforms too. Yeah. And for us, like, we've been getting a lot of people that are like, hey, we should do this together. And it's awesome and we love it.

And for us, the challenge is how do we pick? Yeah. How do we go down a path that, you know, we start making videos about whatever, and all of a sudden that's the thing that goes viral on social. And now we're the guys that make, you know, like chicken pop pie recipes. I'm like, we don't want to do that. Like, that's not, because we don't want to be influencers. We do want to influence the community that people we built.

And we want to build a community of people that will, like, at our parties, what the, one of the best things that's come from this is that we've had new friend groups, meet other friend groups, and they've become friends. They've started dating. That's cool. Like, and so at our parties from one season, you know, episode one, they'll see someone. They'll meet them. Episode 10, you see them on vacation together.

You're like, you guys are friends now? I see them at Salt City Market. And I'm like, you guys, wow, this is awesome. So the building of that, which is kind of the original way you would build a community outside to social media is what's so awesome about it. How do we do that and keep it going on social when it's very superficial? Yeah. That keep it going thing, like Alex is talking about that community forming and now it exists,

so you reinforce it. But I think about the way he's describing that. And I tie back with something you said earlier, Matt, about like, you know, don't stop. You have to keep going, right? So, and this isn't plugging Justin Bieber, like, you know, never stop stopping or whatever. That's a workout playlist. I mean, yeah, dude, Bieber can do it. But like I think a lot of people will say to us, at least to me, they're like, oh my God, you have a cool job.

I'm like, I do have a cool job. And I love what we do. And I love Alex. I love working with him. And I love our crew. And all that's true. But the stress is still there. But I think people don't realize.

And what I'm about to say is true. People don't want to hear it. Almost anybody can do this. If you have a good sense of humor and you're not afraid to share that sense of humor or share what you believe in, anybody can do this. But the problem is one is not. Not all of people try to do it. Or you try and your first video, like you said, the first video we made, I remember it was in Alex's Kitchen.

I like tore a glove. It was, I mean, terrible, like terrible. But we watched it at first, like, oh my God, this is awesome. Then if I go back and watch that now, I cringe my face off, right? I don't like how I look on TV. I don't like how my voice sounds. But if you don't stop and keep going, that's the trick. And I think a lot of people in our community,

in our shared community of influencers and creators, people want to do that, but the first step is they're afraid try and the second one is they're afraid to keep going. I think that people need to keep doing that. I mean, you're in this awesome place, but at one point, I don't know this, Matt, but I bet at one point you looked in the mirror, you're like, should I keep doing this? You know, and that's tough. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's honestly, in my personal case, this isn't even necessarily my first attempt. I opened the first podcast studio in Syracuse over 10 years ago. And the challenge is I was the only person in Syracuse knew what a podcast was at the time. So, uh, didn't go.

too far. But the lessons I learned, the connections I made from doing that at the time are what made this happen, you know, so many years later. So I think there's just a lot to be said for all of that. Guys, let's talk about your show a little bit more, because I want to, for folks that haven't seen it, we know it's a cooking show, right? But give us a rundown. Like, what does it feel like? Are we, here's the recipe and here's what we're going to make today or are we doing something a little different? Yeah, so we're about to release season three. So we have two other seasons that air on PBS across the country. The whole premise is you don't need a reason to get together with your friends and family. So like I was mentioning Halloween was a

reason. We made other reasons. And so our buddy, one of our, you know, producers in DP, Jeremy, he made a joke. And we filmed this behind the scenes video. And he said, I think this whole thing started because Matt and Alex just had these crazy party ideas and just figure. this would be a way to do them where it wouldn't be weird. And it sticks with me because honestly, it's probably true. But we basically develop a theme. So we did one this season. It was a prom for adults.

So a lot of people, everybody's had an experience with a prom in some sort, good or bad, didn't go, went, hated it, loved it. We threw a prom and we made it. We had a band. We had everything. We went to all the 90s, American Pie movies and pulled screen grabs and tried to make it as real as possible. So we throw a prom and then we teach you how to make cocktails. We teach you how to make recipes appetizers all different. We create three recipes in a cocktail and then, you know, my little role on screen besides the, you know, the behind the scene stuff is I'm a little pop-up

character, pop up on the screen and usually correct Matt or heckled Matt or. Correct isn't the right word. HECON is a better word. Or give you other tips, you know, how to throw a party. So like we did a boat party and it was about bringing plastic over glass. And so at the end, so at the end, end of the day, our hope is that people watching see themselves like, hey, I used to do all these with my friends and I don't do it anymore. I should start doing it. They see our friend group, which is real and authentic in the party, and they say, that looks like my friend group. We should do this. Again, we should throw this party. We should cook these recipes. It's not so much like linear of a normal cooking show. We're like, I'm going to make this thing. Sure.

It's the theme behind the fact that like you should come up with your own party with your friends. This could be the one you could do it at your house. You could throw a real problem. doesn't matter. And so after each episode is a theme around that party, and they get, they get a lot of fun, and we've been pushing it pretty, you know, off the charts a little bit different this year. I love this concept, right? This is the coolest thing, because, A, it's unique, like you said. B, it's around what everybody loves, which is food. It's like one of the best, you know, uniters across. So I'd love your professional advice. What would you say is one of the easiest go-to party recipes. What should folks think about making if they want something simple but they want to

wow their friends? Well I think a couple of things if you're throwing a party and you're hosting it, the first thing is you want to buy yourself as much time as possible for two reasons. I don't know about anybody else here. Don't prepare 15 minutes before people show up. But we all do that, right? So for me, and this is true and I love saying what I'm about to say sometimes I can say this is true. We throw parties for a living. So I love to throw parties. Sure. And every single party I've ever thrown in my life, an hour or half hour before the party, like, is anybody to show up, do I have enough food?

Yeah. Get that panicky feeling. The end of the party, you've got to worry about where the food is, what's going on. And you want to hang out and have some drinks and carry on. So, one, what can you make in advance the day before? So I would start, I would throw two things out there. My favorite background in cooking is Cajun Creole. Okay.

And a lot of like French cooking, too, but French cooking takes some time. So I would do something like make a jambalaya the day before or like a crawfish monica or like a seafood pasta or a sausage pasta and make every layer something special. Like you can make baked ziti special if you cook it with sausage, mix the ricotta into the sauce. Oh yeah. Now I've got one thing that you can heat before the party, it's going to be ready to go. On top of that, I would make a batched cocktail. So if it was jambalaya, I'd make like a hurricane that I could keep in a bunch of containers

and shake it. or if it's a summer party, I might the day before, marinate a bunch of chicken, have some sausages, hot dogs, take rolls, but grill the rolls so you get the crisp on the bottom of them, and then make margaritas the day before, like a watermelon mint margarita. Check it on our website. It's a really good one. So you've got it ready to day before.

So grilling in a party is cool because people come and talk to you about that. Sure. Those are the two basic things. And you can prepare yourself the day before, a cocktail, because I love making good cocktails. And we threw this episode in season three, which was so much fun called Up in Smoke. And it was like a bunch of dudes unplugging

and we're just making a killer steak dinner. And the drink he made was a bacon, fat-washed, bourbon Manhattan. That was really good. So we're shooting the episode. And afterwards, my favorite part of the show sometimes, and Alex knows this, as I love, partying as just a crew afterwards for hours.

That's my favorite part. And the whole time in five minutes, and someone's like, yo, dude, can you make me none of those drinks? And I'm like, ugh. Why didn't I bash this? you know so a batch cocktail big starch or proteins prepared the day before that's the first advice i would give that's awesome man that's that's incredible advice um i i think i'm going to ask this

question to Alex um what's the best advice you give to be a guest to one of these parties what should you bring when it's always like i feel like i got to bring something you know yeah so so to one of our parties or a regular party you're talking about just a regular party in general i guess Yeah, I mean, I hate this feeling that I'm about described is that you show up somewhere and you don't know what to bring. Yeah. A bottle of wine. And then sometimes when you go to parties, they'll be like, just bring an appetizer. And you're like, what appetizer?

How many people are going to be there? So I think, you know, Matt mentioned something simple. If you can make a dip, people like dips. People like charcutory boards are popular now. But for me, I just like, I, you know, with our parties, if you want to be a guest, at our party, it's a little different. You just come and be ready to eat and drink and not look at the camera.

Fair enough. That's my only request of you. Do not look at the camera, because everybody looks at the camera. No matter what. They look at the drone, they look at the camera. Come hang out. You don't get to talk a lot. You get to talk a little bit.

We break, we cut. Matt talks, you know, the camera and all the stuff. Party quietly. It's so funny because people don't know how to party quietly. Yeah. But by the end of the party, we hope everybody has an awesome time at our events.

I sort of picture those movies where you see the behind the same. scenes where everybody's dancing and everything, but then they, you know, you show the actual footage where there's no audio and it's just people in a room. Yes. That's kind of cool. We did it. We did an episode, I mentioned the recording studio. And at the very end, the scene was Matt was smashing this guitar and the band was playing. So we had to have the band in the background pretend to play and everybody dancing to the pretend music. And the musicians are like trying their best to look real. Right. And then Matt was smashing

guitar and as he smashed it, they all to react and be like pissed off at him. So that was like the most fun to watch from behind the scenes because it was so they did such a good job. I mean, these people are not actors. They're just normal people that are our friends. So it was so fun to watch them. They did such a great job with it that made it look realistic. But, you know, and part of us always want to entertain too. We want to throw a real party.

So we want, I don't know about Matt, but I'm always concerned at all these parties that everyone, on top of the production side that you have to worry about. I'm worried that everybody's heading a good time constantly. I also worry about that all the time. And it's fun, Alex is talking about like, you're, directing at some cases 80 to 100 people all at one time now who have alcohol in their system. Yeah. We're a little bit amped up. And he does a great job doing that. But I think about, we're always

concerned about really, are they having a good time first? Because if they do, then to look out on camera. Well, every single party, we're worried about that. And every single party, we're like, how do we calm these people down so we can shoot this particular scene there? So it comes across. I mean, the behind the scenes thing, our thing is not like people bored standing around. It's us being like, hey, shut up. We need to shoot this thing right. It's usually our wives that are the ones that are being allowed and we're like, you've been on 30. Yeah. What are you doing?

They're like, oh, sorry. The prom episode, we did this morning after, which is a raging adult, like, not adult. It was like this rooftop party that was just an absolute banger. And I remember at one point, brooming through the place. And I have to be like, excuse me, like, people are like still drinking and parting. And be like, you can't go home or you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Get out of here. So in the best of ways.

So, but every time we're worried about that. And they do. They always have fun. That's wild. So you're in your third season. How many episodes are in a season? We have 10 episodes. So they're roughly 30-minute episodes.

So then the other thing I'm thinking about is, obviously, you're throwing a party for every episode. How do you schedule shooting? Like, how far apart between each one do you do these? Well, Alex can speak to that from a better standpoint, but the national TV show is a half-hour show. Meanwhile, we have over 300, four-minute segments. other places that are on YouTube, right? So I'd love to hear Alex's getting to this. How do we schedule?

Because we have to schedule a weekend with the Buffalo Bills, get their permission to do all this stuff at one point, and then during that week, shoot two other episodes and then the next week, they're on the party. So how do we schedule that? Because I just show up. I think the challenge in season one was getting a format, and then as you just kind of repeat the format.

So even though you want to make it fresh, we'll make it fresh in other ways and the jokes and things, but we have to have a structure. So when everybody comes now, all of our crew, they know that we're shooting scene one, scene two, and they know what they are. That helps us immensely. So whether we're in the Talgate lot at the Buffalo Bill Stadium or we're at a rooftop or it's pouring rain or we filmed down a river, like floating down a river, which was challenging. So regardless of where we were, they know the scenes they have to film and they know the B-roll they have to get. So that helps us from a crew perspective.

Scheduling it, you know, like the prep work of the parties, the planning, like the prom was such a big. overhaul. So we had to rely on our crew to get, you know, at the end of the day, the disco ball wouldn't work. Like, they're so, you know, I talk to tell the crew all the time, they're like, I mean, they know, they work on movies and things. It's like, I'm, you know, while you're trying to plan the guest list and make sure people show up, we're always worried, like, are we going to have 80 people to fill this big room that we got? Yeah. I'm out getting pizza for the crew, or I'm out buying like a random thing at Michaels because we needed this stupid, like this prop, right? And so there's so many layers of it. I think it's just, it's a,

structured thing and we pick the ones that are the best. And then really the heavy lift is, do we have the menu ready? Are the people going to come? Did the invites go out? Did they even understand what we're inviting to half the time? And getting the people there is always the biggest challenge because people have a lot of stuff on their plates. Sure.

Sure. Yeah. I mean, that's got to be a unique part too, right? You've got to probably can't do things during business hours on a Tuesday or something because you need the crowd. Right. So we're picking at weekends. Yeah.

We have been able to pick like Wednesday nights. Uh-huh. It's hard. to get people, but it's the smaller ones. So like the recording studio, we needed like 30 people. So we did it on a weekday night. The weekends are so packed for everyone. And then we got to look at what's happening around the area

because we can't be planning something where we need 100 people and there's, you know, Texas, Syracuse or something's going on. Guys, you've ever thought about taking this format and instead of just shooting the show doing a live, like, ticketed event for the public sort of thing? Yeah, so we have. We've had long discussions about not making an events company, but throwing specific parties.

Sure. And we've done a couple. So Matt mentioned the tattoos. The fundraiser we threw at season one was at Heritage Hill. So it ticketed $100 all you can eat and drink and free tattoos. Wow. And the tattoos were like. And Sophistophunk.

Wow. Yeah, Sophista funk. So we had like, and obviously it's a beautiful venue so it sells itself. But the tattoos were the thing that like, you know, everybody, you've been to a lot of fundraisers, parties, things like that. Heritage Hills throws parties every week. What makes us different? the excitement around that tattoos was wild.

Like we thought we were going to give away 10. I mean, we gave away 30, 40 tattoos. And the line, the sheet, we could have probably gave away 100 of them. Wow. And so there's a section in every great party, you have different things. There's different levels of party. There's the tattoo part. The area where the tattoos, there's a party around there.

There's the band. There's the sunset. There's the cornhole. Whatever. There's like different layers of things that are happening. So there's different groups. And so what we try to do in a lot of those is do that. And so we threw a party at a sponsor, Bear Creek, and we, in Burriton, and we had a lamb-focused menu.

And we brought live sheep there. So it was a little rough. Not only you get to hold the sheep and it was nice and cuddly, but you got to, you know, a different sheep. You got to eat it. And we sold wool gloves. And it was pouring rain out. It was May 31st. I'll remember it last year.

The coldest day out of nowhere. It was freezing cold and pouring rain. and we still have 150 people there. Wow. A great band. And I think as we do those, like we've done those, we're going to do more of those. We partner, like, we have, we're good friends with Myers Creek and dinosaur barbecue working on something with them right now.

So we're going to do more of those. But it's funny because, like, you know, with a show, we've got to film this. Like, time is our most valid resource. It's the one we spend most freely. But the thing is Alex touched on was like the tattoos. Alex has this innate ability, not just from the show, but for throwing parties with some stuff that's there that people don't expect, whether it's like an ice luge, the tattoos, bands, or there's other things that you're like, are people going to like this and they love it? So one of the things, we're going to do more of those things, yes, Matt, and incorporate that part of our personality into it. Like we're doing something with our friend Kelly owns a bookstore called Lit Actually, which is like a romance novel.

And she does like a monthly cool book club and we're doing something with them in our studio. So we can do smaller scale ones. But part of our business plans is like, we say monthly and it's easy to say it. We're going to do one of those ones a month. But we're going to do them right. So the answer to your question is yes. We just got to figure out like we're going to do a bunch of them and they're not going to fail. But behind the scenes, we're going to have to make a lot of mistakes and errors.

So the answer is yes. I just don't know the frequency. Yeah. And we're truly, we're not a catering company. People ask us to cook like that. and we have partners we use. We don't want to be a catering company. We would love, like if someone comes to us and says,

hey, we have this event and we need it to be different, that's right up our alley. But the traditional event stuff, we'll recommend food. The menu, we'll do custom menus, we'll make custom cocktails. But we're not catering it, right? Like, that's not our specialty. So Matt can cook for 10, 20 people. But again, if Matt's cooking for 10 people, he's not in the party.

And he needs to be in the party for this to be successful. I completely agree. Yeah, no, I, it's just interesting as we're talking about your, you know, your community and your following and exactly what you're doing. I'm just thinking as a fan of this, the thing, the ultimate thing I want to do is party with these guys. Yeah. I think we get that a lot in a non, like, like, a hey, we're so cool way, but like we really, what we want to create, regardless of us, our, like, our friend crew as a whole is people want to come hang out with us because they feel like they can be

authentic around the group that we're with and they can, they can be themselves. So like, it's important to us that that is the thing that people think when they see our socials. When they, you know, we had a long time ago early on this, we had the Syracuse, the Symphoria come to us and they said, hey, we don't know what, but we want to do something with you. Well, that was a great part. Yeah. And so we, outside the box, we're like, listen, we're going to throw a rock concert because

you need a younger audience. We're going to throw a rock concert. We're going to make you feel like rock stars. And we're going to throw it in that fashion. And they loved it. And I think that's the kind of parties we want to throw. It's like a different way to look at every one of every coming. The spin that Alex put on that, too, was we had, they had a quartet, and we did it in the

McCarthy Mercantile, and we had, like, we gave them some song ideas. It was like, they would do, like, Welcome to the Jungle or, like, Adele or all these, like, cool pop rock songs. And people were just hanging out drinking, and we made, like, flower crowns, like it was Coachella. And Alex just talked about the people, and you mentioned, how do you come a party with, shoot us an email. There are many people that have been, I mentioned Vinny earlier. We met him from him watching the show.

reaching out to us. There are other people that are like, oh, I know someone who loves the show. Okay, we're throwing a clam bake at Myers Creek. That party was big and we catered to our bar tab was enormous. Bar tab was enormous. And there are people that were like, and when you say them, like, I want to come and party and be on your show. We're like, okay, cool, here's a day. And they say yes. You're like, they're not going to show up. And all of a sudden you're like, okay, let's do it. After all the fun stuff, we actually have a budget, which is crazy that we blow through every time we throw a party. So that party. If you were our sponsors, we're getting better. Yeah, we throw these parties because we want everybody to have the most fun.

So if we talk about it, we're having a launch party for our season three coming up. And one of the things we keep debating is like $1,000 one way or another, if it's going to change the party and make everybody have the most fun, it's worth it. So like that night at the Clambake, not only were we making a show, but I was behind the bar checking the tab every five minutes. We already blew through our first limit. Like, you know, we gave them an area to stop. Wow.

Yeah. It's fun. That's wild. on that, and I'll just ask you a couple more things, fellas, and I'll let you it, because I know you got so many things going on. I really appreciate your time, by the way. This is so cool to have you guys here. This is just so much fun.

I'd talk to you for days, if you let me. But if you wouldn't mind, let's talk a little bit about sponsors for just a moment. So you've got a show on PBS. Obviously, you do some social media stuff. There's some other, you have a background in marketing and all these things. What do you offer your sponsors? And typically, you know, how do you? you choose who you even work with? Yeah. So, obviously the PBS, the media on PBS is a big, you know,

with our show being in 50 plus markets around the country, one of the things is a kind of a national spot that sits with us inside of our show. So outside of the normal TV spend, you can buy something locally. We mentioned C&Y Central news show. We do segments on there. PBS is tough because we can't do product placement. Gotcha. So, and you see a lot of shows that don't food network and stuff. There's not a lot of product placement on it. See, I assumed that would have been the primary thing.

Yeah. And we wish. Yeah, but like, you know, if we're going to a brand, a food or, you know, beverage brand, they're going to want to see their product on our show. Right. We're like, well, we can offer it in the party, but we can't say we're using your product. So that's incredibly hard. But on the Sinclair, you know, CNY Central side, which is our Sunday morning show, we can do

that. Gotcha. So we'll sell opportunities on there. You know, we're doing one this afternoon with a local charity. We're Matt's feeding a dog, which will be a lot of fun. And so we're able to do that on there. Outside of that, because of our agency backgrounds, we get ourselves in trouble this way a little bit, too, is like, we have so much fun with brands come in and say, this is our challenge and that we can solve it. So in the effort of time, we've always liked to have some sort of standard proposal, but we always make them custom.

Yeah. So, you know, whether it's working with whoever, we find their need and we find their need. we make it. So we can we can throw a party. We can create product videos. We can create social media videos for you. We can just throw out of the box idea just in content in general. But what a lot of brands don't have, a lot of these bigger companies that own a bunch of hot sauces or whatever, they own so many products and they can't manage the social. And the big thing is they don't have a personality. So at the very, very least, what we try to offer is we have we have a personality that will engage your fans. We have the production

quality and we can we can make stuff very quickly because it's just it's just us doing it so we we customize a lot of that stuff and and so some people look at it like I don't necessarily want the traditional media route and what we say is that we're not traditional in any sense of the word sure we have that option but yeah we we we customize everything and Alex mentioned about being collaborative so we like any media company like you too like you know you need to generate revenue and this is how you generate revenue but So far, we've been really good at standing by our guns and working with brands with products and things that we use. Krause is one of our sponsors. I would not be alive nor would Alex if we hadn't been in Kraus Hospital, right?

So that's cool. The Redo, we're doing some other work, IBW Nika. There's lights on to my house. It's because of nutrition. So that part takes care of itself. But Alex mentioned the creative side of it. And that's where we actually have the most fun and we stretch ourselves too thin, but at our expense not to sponsor. So we work with one of our big partners is has been Tito's vodka, the national brand.

And we help them come up with the revenues for cocktails and for National Records Store Day. If they have a new challenge, like Alex said, we'll do that. We have one brand that their deal was Sam Adams. It was during COVID. And they're like, hey, you know, we love what you guys are doing. And we made like an interview with their head brewmaster about Sam Summer because they needed content to keep people engaged. And we're like, what other problems do you have? And we're hoping they're like, we need a TV commercial.

And they're like, well, our regional sales teams, which are really awesome, we're having a hard time, like, keeping them engaged because we're separated. So we, Alex and I came up with an idea to throw, we basically mailed all of them different ingredients. And over Zoom would throw these banging parties. And they were like, we'll do this for two hours. And we'll instruct them how to do it and have this like question and answer game. And every single time, we're like, this is two hours. And four hours later, we're on the Zoom.

And I'm like. And no one's getting off. How do we turn this thing off? We're like, should I just hit the power button? What Matt said, though, is like demos. We have a new studio in Syracuse, which we're going to do food demos and parties and things like that. So we have a lot of ways to kind of stretch in that.

And like because we come at it as like we want a truly, we don't want, I mean, we do, right? We want a sponsorship money. But we don't want sponsorship. We don't want sponsorship money where there's no value to the sponsor. Sure. I feel I hate selling things. Yeah. As does Matt.

I hate being salesy. So I want them to come and say, these guys are offering me value, not just like, hey, they came and sold me a magazine slot. So it's very important that we offer them value. Totally. I love that. And I can see that that's definitely something that you have to offer. You know, you've got clearly the resume and the demonstration that we can do some cool stuff that will get that attention and give you some true value. And I'm with you.

It's weird when you look around and see some of these kind of advertising and marketing worlds and the amount of money. people spend on things that clearly has no returns. You know, it's like what, there's always been a way you do things. There's always been a way and all this stuff works. And there's a lot of companies. And listen, they're supporting awesome things.

And it's like things, entertainment, whatever it is in the community that we get because of that money that may not support the business back. But it's awesome. And that's why we have cool stuff here. But at the end of the day, with our kind of brand,

ours is unique because we will do, we have the power to just do it. Like we literally can say, Matt, you want to talk about this on camera. It's edgy. Yeah, of course they do. You know, whereas a lot of companies, you just can't do that, right? Yeah. Yeah, like the traditional media, there's a space for that.

There's a good billboards that add value. Like I saw this great Budweiser one a little while, or Bud Light one, which was great. There's other ones. You're like, why did you this person waste all this overspill on this? I love billboards, though. I do, I do too. But make sure you're not wasting your money. Like you said, Matt.

And Alex just touch on something like, we have the power to do this. I, one of the things that I love about working with Alex that puts so much, I don't know, it's one of the driving forces of our brand is, and I get this from Alex, but this is what he does. He sees a challenge and he's like, hell yeah,

what is a creative way I can solve this? And sometimes they should be unsolvable, but we haven't met an unsolvable one yet. The weather kind of screws us something sometimes. But so for sponsors, and if anyone's out there looking, visit spashcockfunk.com. But anyways, we love to find creative

ideas and it's it works we have a lot of challenges so season forward in the development of and i i want to push it further like i don't want like oh you guys through like a you know we did a kentucky derby party which was awesome wow it's a little bit more of parties that people have heard of i want it to go a little bit wild i'll roast a horse i'm like that's not no i uh we we have this idea this year and matt said there's no challenges we haven't this is going to be the one that is the is the one that could break us but we want to throw this sick concert in the middle of the lake and all the boats, pontoon boats, whatever, you come up.

We have a barge in the middle of the lake and we developed this. We were at our buddy Timmy's camp on a Nautil Lake and I was like, this would be cooler. You know, all the boats pull up. This would be cool if there was a band there. And we kept talking about it and our buddy Timmy's very like, he can make this stuff happen. He understands how the water works.

The physics behind it. And he's like, you would need a barge this big. I'm like, let's get one. And so we're reaching out to like big 90s punk bands and stuff. And like, we want, because at the end of the day, the shoot's going to be awesome, the visuals are going to be beautiful. But the party's going to be that much more fun. And something that, you know, I don't know that they throw anywhere. I love that. Just the whole concept, honestly, is, you know, as adults, you don't even get to go to many parties.

I feel like, you know, or they're boring as hell. And so I love that you guys are doing this in general. And I also think that, like, your timing is perfect because, you know, as you're just looking at trends, a lot of folks are saying that we're finally. long past that COVID stuff that really kept people home. And honestly, I think going out and doing things that started to decline long before COVID, but now people are over it. And I think the desire to actually get out of the house and be with other humans in person is a booming thing, once again, which is wonderful.

And you guys are right that you're showing them how to do it right, which is the greatest place to be. People have come to our parties and told us that that, like, they don't ever. get to they have kids i have kids yeah with kids you know you're working and you have kids yeah people ask me what my hobby is i'm like i don't know work right kids like there's no because you don't do you don't have the time to do that stuff so we're giving them like there's no excuse we're throwing you a party it's free you're gonna come hang out with us and you're gonna have a lot of fun and then you're gonna want to come to the next one and i think what we've been finding is that we're reviving i think 25 to 54 it's like our sweet spot because it's people that used to do the thing

yeah do it anymore because it doesn't exist exist, and so we're giving them that option. I love it. I love it. Spatchcock Funk is the name of the show. I'm guessing that's the easiest way to find you on all the socials. Yeah, following on all the socials are, the half our episodes and tons of other content are also on YouTube.

Nice. But, yeah, like, and luckily, SEO is not a problem for us when you search our name. We're right at the top. See, that's, that's brilliant. And you mentioned earlier your website is that's the best place to go if you want to sponsorship, reach out and learn more about the. the show is that is that yeah yep there's a there's a contact us tab at the top um dm us on instagram honestly like hopefully we've given and if you can't find us let us know because we

hopefully we've given you have enough ways to to hunt us down i you know or come to the salt city market i spent a lot of time there too and then uh lastly i'll say we we talked a little bit about the show about how you're on in these different markets and the schedules are a little different right in terms of when they start the episodes and things but locally here in central new york a greater new york state when might people find the show on on PBS. So, uh, season three starts April 7th. Nice. Tuesdays nine and then it re-airs each episode that week airs on Saturdays at 3.30. Sweet. Um, they, I believe are in the progress, process of airing season of one and two leading up, but then it will rear. So it's 10 weeks in a row. It'll rear again. Um,

they get released on our YouTube as well. So, you know, you'll, one way or another, you'll find it. And other, if you're in other cities, like we've got, um, a lot of peeps in Denver and San Francisco and LA in those places. So they air at different times. But if you are listening to this, because I know you got a lot of people that are New York's transplants and people there in other areas, if it hasn't started on your PBS station yet, just go to our YouTube and check it out. That's great. That's great. Any plans to visit some of those bigger cities? Yes. Do some things out there. Yeah. We were trying to expand our footprint. So when we went to Buffalo for the Bills game and we filmed, we gained a ton of Buffalo fans. We went to Albany

recently for this awesome wine festival. again gained it. So we're expanding through New York, but Denver, Matt mentioned, like, they air our show three times a week. And so we get messages all the time from Denver and different cities. And so like our hope is that we're going to throw these kind of parties in those cities. And like we were talking about throwing a party at Red Rock and Colorado. I was just going to say, imagine if you could do that there. Yeah. We don't know the details yet. We've been talking about an event in Canada with some of our friends through Watertown to Ottawa and then other streaming services that we're talking to. So every single time. there's an event request from us. Our goal is how can we make this the craziest event you've ever been to and the craziest location? So like even our crew is like, oh, you found like this building is so awesome. People would come in here and be like everybody that comes in is like, this is amazing. That's what we want everybody to do when they come to our parties. Like I've never been here.

And in the process of this show and all the crazy stuff, they're seeing more of the community that they've never seen. Some of these streaming services are sleeping on you, fellas. I'm telling you what. Forget about the show. You'd throw an event that would get enough publicity for them. It would be worth whatever they pay you. But they'll figure it out eventually. Yeah, hopefully they figure it out.

I love it. I love it, guys. Matt, Alex, this has been awesome. Come back anytime and anything that we can do to help promote even your charitable efforts or just talk about new seasons and new things going on. That's absolutely. We need to have you at our studio and then also at the next parties. We'll make sure they're there.

Hell yeah. I'm down for that. That's a work appointment where I get to go to a party. Right it off. I'm totally with it. I love it, fellas. Anything else we should tell folks before we cut out? No?

I don't think so. I think this is awesome, man. I really appreciate it. I also appreciate everybody for watching and listening and sharing and everything they do here with Good News, York. And especially to our sponsor, Ads on the Go. Get Ads on the go.com is the website. Our man, Zach's got the billboard truck. You see all over Central New York.

And it's awesome. It does an incredible job. And we can't thank him enough for being our ongoing sponsor, Good News York. So with that, we'll see you next time. Peace out.