The great thing about humor on the internet is few rules govern what can and can't be done. Thirty-second bits, gross-out gags, weird one-offs made with GoPro cameras. It's pretty much the Wild West. So it's no surprise that jokesters go there when they want to get away with things they could never do on television. And now they're all – well, a lot of them, anyway – are headed to YouTube for a week of comedy programming.
You know, like we see on television. Only more raw.
That doesn't mean it is television. YouTube Comedy Week, which launches with a live-streamed show May 19, is the first attempt by Google's video-sharing site to make a full programming slate (or whatever the online equivalent of a slate is) dedicated to humor. It's also an attempt to bring big names like Rainn Wilson and Seth Rogen together with home-grown internet celebrities like the Gregory Brothers (the "Auto-Tune the News" crew) and the team behind Epic Rap Battles of History. So even though it's got a lot of star-power packaged in a neat box, it's also a lot more diverse in its programming than TV because its bringing established stars and up-and-comers into the same channel.
From the celebrity side, YouTube has the folks behind its experimental original programming portal Jash: Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera, Reggie Watts and Tim & Eric. The TV veterans were attracted to Jash because, as Silverman told us at South By Southwest, "It's just boundaryless … There's no middle man. Nobody has to approve a script; nobody has to look at a script. There doesn't even have to be a script." Or, as Watts put it, the channel was "a home to do whatever the fuck we want." (See how Watts used his creative freedom in the video below.) And from the viral video ranks the site is bringing in New York-based prank collective Improv Everywhere, amongst others.
So, basically, Comedy Week is a showcase of its abilities to be a place for TV people who want to do things they can't on networks and for people who have never been on TV but who make television-worthy shows. Speaking with Wired about the Jash launch recently, Forrester principal analyst and Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation author James McQuivey noted that this convergence is a fertile "middle ground" that could take off once audiences have made it clear they will spend a lot of time watching and sharing these videos.
"Today, most YouTube channels are coming from the bottom-most ranks of video producers – the aspiring artists, the wannabes, and the amateurs," McQuivey said in an email. "The next step for these channels is for the people at the top of the current system to start dipping down toward the middle, spending less, earning less, but generating more attention than they can get waiting for their next professional gig or just tweeting madly."
That seems to be the path YouTube is on. The company has spent millions developing original programming and is just beginning to capitalize on it. In an interview with the Associated Press, YouTube's head of marketing Danielle Tiedt said Comedy Week was just the beginning of the site's plans to launch coordinated video slates. "We're hoping to do this in a pretty regular rhythm," Tiedt told the wire service. "You'll see several of these coming from us, for sure, as we highlight really big areas that we think are amazing areas of strength for YouTube."
A comedy week is probably a good place to start. Since the inception of web video, most of what's gone viral has been funny in one way or another and that's what most people are looking for when they fire up YouTube. Not to mention that acts that started as web video stars – like Andy Samberg's Lonely Island crew, which is also contributing to Comedy Week – are now famous television and movie stars. But if YouTube's new week 'o comedy demonstrates anything it might be the power shift in what is considered the best place to make a funny.
"The internet can be a minor league for TV, but it's also a major league in it's own way," Watts, one of the stars of IFC's Comedy Bang! Bang!, told Wired. "The young people today don't [use] TVs – even huge avid television lovers – because they watch on Hulu, they watch on YouTube, and they watch on the internet. It isn't like television is necessarily the bigger medium at all."
YouTube Comedy Week launches with a global livestream comedy special May 19 at 8 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific. (See what they did there?)
