Film guy at SXSW: comedy on television and the web (a panel discussion)

by John P. Meyer

Just sat in (Saturday, March 14) on a SXSW panel discussion on the topic of comedy on television and the web. Panelists included Ricky Van Veen (CollegeHumor.com), who served as moderator and proclaimed that his site proferred the largest quantity of dick jokes on the web. (Can't wait to check it out.)

Also holding forth was Meredith Scardino, who currently writes for The Colbert Report and used to write for the Letterman Show, for which she claims she got lots more street cred from her parent's friends.

Next up was B.J. Novak, who - in addition to playing Ryan Howard on The Office - also writes, produces and has actually composed some soundtrack stuff. But he can't tap dance, which - he said - keeps him from being a quintuple threat.

Avner Ronen of boxee.tv proclaims (perhaps unsurprisingly) that standard broadcast is dead, since people can now buy a $10 cable and stream shows from the web right to their HDTV without all the hassle of punching that remote control.

Finally, Keith Richman of Break.com seemed to be the guy with the biggest expertise in the monetization of web video. Bottom line: it's not happening yet, with advertisers paying A LOT more for broadcast ads than they do for web content that in many cases reaches the same number of viewers. (Or more.) It's a mindset thing, at least in part.

The discussion's opening premise? Comedy is the new porn. In the sense that it's comedy that's driving viewers to web video, just as it was porn that first drew consumers to platforms such as VCRs and DVD players.

Oddly, from a panel replete with comedy writers, there was not a lot to laugh about - the panelists seemed more intent on actually disseminating information and sharing their views than on yukking it up. (Which, for some reason, was a bit of a let-down.)

An audience Q/A ended the discussion, and no fewer than three of the questioners made a point of introducing themselves as "so and so from such and such dot com, another humor site." If I didn't know better, I'd think they were trying to get some peripheral buzz started in this auditorium full of interested (and presumably Twitter-connected) parties.

Turns out the fellow who was seated behind me (I couldn't help but note, while eavesdropping on his conversation) was a guy named Ben from The Onion. Who did not take the opportunity to stand up and introduce himself and tell the audience who he worked for as a preliminary to asking a question.

God bless you, Ben.

this report posted from the Austin Convention Center, which has great high-speed wireless