A lady is standing outside a grocery store handing out $50 bills. Your first question is, “Since these are easy to get, are they worth fifty bucks?”
Talk shows are easy to make because they’re not worth $50
Successful talk shows (like ones where there’s an audience) are not easy to make. In fact, the format is so rigid and boring in itself that it’s harder to grow than other entertainment platforms.
Here are 3 things for audience retention and growth.
- network effect
- lock-in
- entertainment value
It seems that the talk show format is democratized and open to anyone because all you need is a desk and a way to publish video, but the the three crucial parts of success are not democratized at all.
But, there are very successful talk shows! When we think about the most successful talk shows, we think of the big ones on the networks.
Network talk shows – especially before everyone had cable – had powerful network effect and lock in. Everyone would talk about it. If you hadn’t seen The Tonight Show the night before, you were a loser. The more of your social circles saw it, the better the show was because you had something to talk about. If you were a person that didn’t get to catch the news, you would at least pickup on the headlines and find out things that celebrities were up to. The entertainment value – and the thing that drew people in to watch was the celebrities. Once you picked which one of the two talk shows to watch, that was locked in as part of your identity.
Entertainment value is not that important.
A friend of mine who is one of the most charismatic entertainers in the world worked on doing a talk show. He did it live in a theater and recorded and he did it supremely from an entertainment value perspective — for his level. He had minor celebrities, he had writers, he had added in his personal style and extra entertainment.
I believe he didn’t sell his talk show to anyone because TV execs care about having an audience. They sell ads to an audience. Bringing his show to their network didn’t bring an audience. They could set up a desk. They could hire a more famous host. They could get the celebrities. The talk show – even though it was very entertaining and the live audiences loved it – didn’t have intrinsic value.
So, once you get into this game, part of it is about how big of celebrities can you get… unfortunately, it’s not as important at the real stuff.
It’s possible for an online talk show to be worth $50
Cable talk shows still have a very broad reach, but not as broad, so they get more specific. Sport Center focusses on the sports world. The Colbert report focused on news and current events. Tucker Carlson focusses on his audience.
Even though it feels like the internet gives you the broadest audience possible, you don’t really have the ability to reach out to everyone and say “give this a try” and you’re also probably not going to make something that gets lock-in from the general population. It’s unlikely you’ll get the whole world talking about you at school or around the water cooler. So, if you’re starting up a talk show online or trying to figure out why your talk show online isn’t doing too great, look at getting the most specific.
Can you serve everyone in one small town? I think my home town has 6k people. If you had 3,000 views every episode, wouldn’t that be nice?
How about a group of people with one shared interest who are already a community and already talking to each other? EG your show is just for the people who are interested in monster makeup.
There are other ways to setup lock-in and network effect beyond the social pressure way, also. Maybe you offer something every episode that people need bad and can’t get it anywhere else?
Obviously, this is only a starting point
You’re going to work hard to be specific, make a talk show that’s just for a specific kind of person. Then, you could grow that audience once those people adore it and can’t go without it.
Consider: is a talk show even something you want to do, or do you just want to be interesting and serve an audience? There are a million formats for that and many of them are more fun at their core than a person sitting and talking to a person.