Actually he said, "...And I've got the money back already. I broke even — and then some."
So not only did he break even, he has earned some additional money. And his initial statement ""I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special," says that doing comedy specials the 'regular' way earned him nothing.
Now I expect it is a bit more nuanced than that, in that he was no doubt paid an appearance fee for being in a comedy special, and he didn't put up the money to produce those specials So his "net" was the fee and opportunity cost of the time he didn't spend producing the special.
Contrast that with the one he put up on the web, he paid all the costs (although I assume the 'audience' in the special also paid to attend). The and it took some time no doubt to do the post production work and to put it up for streaming, etc. Which went up on the 10th of December and here 3 days later has broken even "plus a bit more."
Over the course of the year, more people will watch it, and while the volume goes down, the tail stretches out for literally years. He's got this material that has paid for itself and he can license it to Netflix for their streaming service, picking up a bit of change when people watch it there. He can put it up on iTunes or Amazon's video service and pick up some cash when it rolls there. And the killer?
Is he makes another 'special', and now that folks are coming to the web page he puts up for the first one, he can list them both.
Eventually (sooner rather than later) he's got a catalog of comedy bits, several distribution channels and a stready revenue stream and there isn't a 'media company' (like a Viacom or Sony) anywhere in sight.
Now someone else says "Hey man, that rocks how can I do that?" and they convert over. And two, maybe five, years from now "suddenly" everyone seems to be their own production/distribution company and a new ecosystem sprouts that helps those companies get their content to market and Netflix/Amazon/Apple are cutting deals with them directly and you and I win because we get better quality stuff and not so much of the hassles and the media companies lose.
Sketched out well. I listen a lot of podcasts by comedians and they all think what Louis CK is doing is great. I'd imagine that some that aren't quite as popular as him think they can't do it too, but once they see that it isn't insurmountable it will happen more. Comics are really protective of their material and want control of it: a few months back there was a big controversy over Stitcher.com grabbing RSS feeds and putting ads on them (http://www.nerdist.com/2011/09/the-stitcher-situation/).
So not only did he break even, he has earned some additional money. And his initial statement ""I've never seen a check from a [TV] comedy special," says that doing comedy specials the 'regular' way earned him nothing.
Now I expect it is a bit more nuanced than that, in that he was no doubt paid an appearance fee for being in a comedy special, and he didn't put up the money to produce those specials So his "net" was the fee and opportunity cost of the time he didn't spend producing the special.
Contrast that with the one he put up on the web, he paid all the costs (although I assume the 'audience' in the special also paid to attend). The and it took some time no doubt to do the post production work and to put it up for streaming, etc. Which went up on the 10th of December and here 3 days later has broken even "plus a bit more."
Over the course of the year, more people will watch it, and while the volume goes down, the tail stretches out for literally years. He's got this material that has paid for itself and he can license it to Netflix for their streaming service, picking up a bit of change when people watch it there. He can put it up on iTunes or Amazon's video service and pick up some cash when it rolls there. And the killer?
Is he makes another 'special', and now that folks are coming to the web page he puts up for the first one, he can list them both.
Eventually (sooner rather than later) he's got a catalog of comedy bits, several distribution channels and a stready revenue stream and there isn't a 'media company' (like a Viacom or Sony) anywhere in sight.
Now someone else says "Hey man, that rocks how can I do that?" and they convert over. And two, maybe five, years from now "suddenly" everyone seems to be their own production/distribution company and a new ecosystem sprouts that helps those companies get their content to market and Netflix/Amazon/Apple are cutting deals with them directly and you and I win because we get better quality stuff and not so much of the hassles and the media companies lose.
Can't wait.