I’ve been a huge fan of Norm MacDonald’s since he hosted SNL’s Weekend Update. I believe this was the last time SNL was semi-dangerous. No one knew what Mr. MacDonald would say, and this inability to keep him under censorial wraps apparently led to his untimely dismissal (see exhibit A below; apologies to all who are offended – sort of).
In any case, he’s back (we shall not discuss his short-lived network tv show), and is now hosting a sports show.
I know this not because I’m a sports fan, but because I follow Mr. MacDonald’s tweets.
In this way I became aware that he would be providing audio commentary during the Masters Tournament.
Again, not being a big sports fan, I don’t imagine I would’ve watched any of the Masters had it not been for Mr. MacDonald’s audio commentary, but, out of curiousity, I tuned in — both to the network broadcast and the Norm MacDonald online commentary (done via UStream) Sunday afternoon.
Within about five minutes of having audio on from both the network telecast and the MacDonald webstream, I muted the network commentators, and listened instead exclusively to Mr. MacDonald (and his less-entertaining cronies).
Beyond making golf more tolerable, this concept of sort of hi-jacking one form of programming and adding another layer to it is very interesting to me.
Certainly, this isn’t new. I remember my Granddad muting the TV and listening to the radio commentators during Washington Redskin games in the 70s and 80s.
And, of course, there was (is?) Mystery Science Theater, which added snarky comments to “B” movies.
What makes what Mr. MacDonald is doing different from the above examples is that it shows – in theory – the accessability of this gambit to just about anyone.
If you have a voice and some modicum of (real or perecieved) expertise about a topic, you can now use free tools to commentate on just about anything, and (potentially) provide an alternative to the “programmed” approach.
This is, of course, consistent with all sorts of “re-mix” culture (mashups, remixes, artists supplying constituents with ProTools stems, etc.), but something else is going on here as well.
It has more to do with the continued reclamation of the voice that – to a certain degree – began occurring with the dawn of the Internet, and has accelerated with the development of social channels.
No longer must we sit passively and listen to the inane patter of some “commentator.” If we elect to do so, we can provide our own commentary, and, depending upon our POV, skills, network, etc., provide an alternative.
I don’t for a minute think that more than a fraction of the people who listened to the Masters commentators listened to Mr. MacDonald’s commentary stream, but, the fact of the matter is, there was an alternative, and for me at least, a far superior alternative.
I hope that this type of thing takes off.
Why, for instance, wouldn’t Perez Hilton provide commentary during the Oscars (God, Help us. And, yes, you can send me angry messages if he decides to do this). Or, better, Scorcese?
What about some musical “expert” providing commentary for the Grammys?
What about someone like Ana Marie Cox providing audio commentary for the next RNC? (I loved her live blogging (now twittering, I guess) of prior political events).
There are numerous financial experts for whom I would gladly mute CNBC’s commentators in order to listen to as the market day evolves.
I imagine we’ll see more of this type of stuff; how can we not?
Remember, we all have megaphones, and, increasingly, there are creative ways to use them.
And now… vintage Norm MacDonald:
Tags: norm macdonald, SNL
I wrote a post a bit ago called “Buy One, Give One Free” that got batted around the Internet a bit.
The basic gist of my post was that artists (musicians, writers, poets, et al.) could adopt some ideas from Social Entrepreneurship , and repurpose these ideas to their benefit; specifically, the idea (most visible via Toms Shoes) of making it possible to give a product away when a customer buys one.
I bemoaned the fact that I didn’t see an implementation of this type of thing in the arts:
I’ve been frustrated by the lack of a mechanism for this type of sharing of information, which makes it easy for the existent constituent to introduce the work to her friends. As above, one may exist, and, if so, I’d love to see some examples, so please leave them in the comments.
Well, I’m really happy to report that, due to the fact that I have some brilliant friends, we’re making some progress.
I saw the following tweet from Ty White the other day, and new I was in for something good:
As Ty says in his blog post
A few months ago, George Howard blogged about a great idea for artists trying to get their word out: offer your fans the option to send a free copy of the record to a friend when they buy a copy for themselves. It’s a great way to offer your fans additional social capital (by sending a copy of a great record to a friend) while helping the artist get introduced to new people.
I took this idea to Jim from All Smiles, who immediately agreed to try it out with the new record. Easier said than done. As it turned out, we needed a new API call from Topspin (BIG thanks to Varley and Kris!) to detect when the purchase was complete, and also needed a way to store the sharers name, recipient’s name, and recipient’s email. I dove into PHP and MySQL for the first time, and thankfully Topspin bent over backwards to help get the API calls working.
As you can see, it takes a unique type of person (like Ty unquestionably is) to not only see value in an idea (and give credit where credit is due), but implement the idea. As Ty wrote, this was “easier said than done.”
Nevertheless, he did it, and the results have been solid:
Two weeks ago we launched pre-order, and this Tuesday the album hit the street. As of writing, we’ve seen 21% of purchasers take the option to send the album to a friend.
Ty feels this number (21%) can be higher with some tweaking, and offers some good suggestions on how to improve.
My point in all this is that we live today in an era where we can rapidly go from idea to execution. This delights me to no end. Not long ago, in order to get any type of web-based idea up and running was a long, expensive, tedious process that more often than not took the wind out of the excitement of the idea. In other words, you knew that it was going to be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to try something out, so you didn’t try. Not good.
Today, we can try with much lower costs (real and opportunity).
I’m fully aware that it takes a uniquely talented type of person, like Ty, to be able to pull something like the “Buy One, Give One Free” idea, but it can be done, and, increasingly, it can be done quickly and cheaply.
This bodes very well for all of us. The more ideas that can get to market – in order to succeed or fail – faster, the better.
Thanks, Ty, for making my little idea manifest. Let’s now continuously improve.
Tags: tech, ty white
