Motley Fool Money - Netflix & the Rise of Comedy Specials

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

Once upon a time, 1-hour comedy specials were a rare bird. Will the big investments Netflix has made in stand-up comedy backfire? Jason Zinoman, comedy critic for The New York Times, weighs in on the business of comedy.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi everyone, I'm Charlie Cox. Join us on Disney Plus as we talk with the cast and crew of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. What haven't you gotten to do as Daredevil? Being the Avengers. Charlie and Vincent came to play. I get emotional when I think about it. One of the great finale of any episode we've ever done. We are going to play Truth or Daredevil.

What? Oh boy. Fantastic. You guys go hard, man. Daredevil Born Again, official podcast Tuesdays, and stream season two of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again on Disney Plus. I'm Chris Hill. So what have you been binge watching lately?

There's a lot to choose from out there with so many documentaries, award-winning dramas, and action movie franchises. And then there's stand-up comedy. Netflix in particular has so many stand-up comedy offerings. Some have wondered if it will lead to a repeat of the industry imploding like it did in the early 1990s. Jason Zinaman is the comedy critic for The New York Times. And when we spoke a couple of years ago, he shared why he is not concerned about the business

of stand-up comedy. There was a time when getting an HBO special was, you know, the pinnacle. And now it's the Netflix special. And, you know, you could criticize Netflix by putting out so much, you know, almost once a week. And, you know, Comedy Central and C-So and HBO are still putting them out, that they do seem like less of an event than what we have. at an HBO, where if you're just getting an HBO, just the HBO stamp of approval meant something, which raises this question that are we in a situation like the first comedy boom in the late 80s,

early 90s where this glut is about to, you know, we're heading towards a comedy bust. There's too much comedy. And I actually don't think so. I think there's differences between these two booms. And the main one is it's the difference between real estate and the internet. You know, the reason that the first comedy boom bust was that people built, you know, there was a chuckle fort in every town. There was all these comedy clubs and every day, and there weren't enough, there wasn't enough good talent to support all these places. So audiences were seeing a lot of bad comedy. And, you know, people stop, people sort of tuned out.

But the pool of people who are willing to go to a comedy club and have the two-drink minimum and see comedy is a lot smaller than the audience that is going to watch a streaming stand-up special. You know, this like this Dave Chappelle special, you got $40 million or whatever for, it's a huge hit. It gets a huge amount of media attention. I can tell from just covering comedy the appetite for, in a time when movie stars seem to, the glow of movie stars seem to be dimming, I would say the glow of stand-up still seem

to be pretty bright. If you want to read more about the topic of comedy, check out Jason Cinnamon's great book about David Letterman, entitled Letterman, The Last Giant of Late Night. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.