Streaming is bad for comedy. Not inherently, but it just is right now. No one has figured it out, or rather no one is motivated to figure it out. No one even really seems to have identified this as a problem as far as I can tell. We are now basically fully transitioned out of the cable era and into the streaming era, as proven by my Father’s Day call with my dad canceling his cable package. We’re living in the future, baby! While some things have improved with the proliferation of streaming we sadly still haven’t figured out how to do comedy on demand right. 

Thank god I have a solution, it won’t happen, it may not even be possible to happen, but it could work: Fully rip off the model of Shudder.

If you’re not familiar, Shudder is a streaming service owned by AMC Networks that hyper-focuses on horror entertainment. “You’re describing Seeso, we had Seeso and no one liked it and it died in less than two years” you’re saying to me. And sure yeah, OK, that’s basically what I am describing, but not really.

Seeso was a comedy-specific streaming service that lived from 2016-2017 who’s biggest draw was having every old SNL episode. Most people didn’t know about it, and the ones that did were probably comics attempting to squeeze a dime out of it before it went out of business. It was a noble but flawed experiment. Maybe it was before it’s time, maybe it was too late. I won’t guess about those things, but I will tell you why it’s not Shudder and what Shudder does right that could be replicated.

Centrality

OK, so this is the obvious thing that Seeso did do, but it feels like it’s more important to exist now that there are even more streaming services than back in 2016. If you want to watch old Adult Swim shows, Kids in the Hall episodes, I Think You Should Leave, MacGruber and any comedy movies, you’d need at least 5 streaming services. That’s terrible, especially considering it’s not weird that Shudder does it. I know securing rights has to be a full time job and not cheap, but they rotate through new horror movies all the time, why can’t someone do that with comedy tv shows and movies? Just lease old stuff like Get a Life for 6 months, or snag Atlanta on a delayed release contract or something. I know it’s expensive but I don’t think money means anything anymore.

Movies

Shudder’s main draw is movies. They have an overwhelming amount of them actually. You can see current exclusives produced in-house alongside classics from the 50s, or more obscure cheap-o drive in movies from the 70s. No matter what kind of horror fan you are, there’s something you’ll like.

I guess Seeso had movies? I can’t find a list anywhere, but they definitely did. Not anything close to the depth and deliberate curation of Shudder though. A comedy Shudder could likely have a base of classics you can get for cheap then try and find a couple heavy hitters from each generation as well as the obscure stuff, fill it in with a rotating stock of “modern classics” and you’ve filled out your base that people can idley scroll through.

No Episode Dumps

Maybe this is mostly just a problem with Netflix but releasing an entire season of a show is very bad for sitcoms. I won’t cede any ground on this, it’s just terrible. I can maybe watch 3 episodes of a sitcom in a day tops, then when you’re ready for more in a couple days, it’s off the main page, you maybe forgot about it. The whole plan just falls apart. 

This is also bad for spoilers. Not like that’s a huge deal for a more traditional sitcom, but if something has a season long arc, the first month of it’s release is a fuzzy zone where you don’t know what you might see online. Just terrible.

Also, the biggest reason sitcoms don’t work when you drop an entire season at once is no holiday episodes that line up with the holiday. This sucks so much and we all know it. Enough already.

Channels

It’s insane to me more streamers don’t do this, but Shudder always has something playing. You open the app and they have three channels that will play a preprogrammed list of movies for you, just like old TV! Turn on Shudder and you’re right in the middle of Halloween the Shawshank Redemption of horror movies. You can just pick it up from any point and watch the rest of the movie.

A comedy streamer could have the sitcom channel, the 90s movie channel, the cartoon channel. Just program a running order of things that fit your genre and let them play. It’s a perfect way to keep people on the app even if it’s in the background. Can’t decide? Just open it and watch what’s on TV.

Name

Here’s a hard to pin down one, but it’s a real “I know it when I see it” thing. The name Shudder is perfect. It’s evocative, it’s brief, it’s not cute or spelled funny. Seeso on the other hand was made fun of because it sounded dumb. I personally didn’t mind the name that much, but mostly because every name is bad. Hulu, Quibi, Netflix, are all pretty lousy names. Most of the other streaming services are just existing brand names and are a little boring. You’d have to come up with something good that’s not embarrassing, which isn’t easy, especially for a comedy channel where your audience is hyper aware of what sounds like a joke.

To rip off Shudder on this one is a bad move and would result in something like Chuckle or Giggle. Awful choices. This is why I’m thinking of just doing a total repurpose of the brand name Comedy Central. Yep, in a move that is likely impossible, but just turn Comedy Central into its own subscription streaming service. Bring it back to its glory days of being a weird dumping ground for old SNL, stray stand up clips, and a handful of original headlining shows. Plus there just needs to be a place where we can watch old Comedy Central shows. Chocolate News is in danger of being lost to history! We need a place for Strangers with Candy, Detroiters, Broad City, and old Daily Show clips (have whole lists of curated of Even Stepvhen or Frank DeCaro segments, you have tons of stuff to work with that no sane person would dig through).

Providing Something You Can’t Get Elsewhere

Shudder is part streaming service, part production house, and perhaps most importantly part film preservation service. Where else can you stream hard to find classics like The Devils, experimental work like Mad God, or gory foreign films other services don’t care about like One Cut of the Dead. Shudder even dips it’s toes into streaming movies that are outright upsetting and offensive like Cannibal Holocaust.

Not like the comedy streamer needs to preserve intentionally offensive material, but it could have a section of curiosities from days past. Not like I’m dying to see it, but why can’t we see trash like The Underground Comedy Movie somewhere? Delivered with a little context, this kind of this could be valuable.

A Loving Community

Here it is: the most important part of the equation and more likely than streaming rights contracts to stop a service like this from working. Shudder has a built-in horror fanbase that has been growing for decades. Kept alive by magazines like Fangoria and horror conventions, they finally have a streaming home base. Shudder knows this and doesn’t take it for granted either. They take care of their fans because they are horror fans too.

The most important element of this to me is The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. I’m a pretty late in life horror fan, and during 2020’s quarantine I used my time indoors to watch tons of horror films and catch up on blind spots. I’d never seen Psycho, The Exorcist, or Ghosts of Mars! Internally I was ashamed of my lack of knowledge, but you can casually be brought into the fold by watching The Last Drive-In. Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy the Mail Girl host a double feature every week and break down the history of the film, its production, explore its subgenre, have interviews with actors, producers, and directors all while keeping it light so it doesn’t feel like film school. 

It’s the key to Shudder’s model for me. Watch a movie on The Last Drive-In, then let that guide you to make your own choices in the Shudder catalog now that it’s not so overwhelming.

You could absolutely do this for comedy, in fact I think for a lot of things it’s absolutely necessary. Comedy notoriously ages like yogurt in an Econovan, but that doesn’t mean we have to throw it away! What if we discover penicillin? A lot of movies resonate generationally. I’ve always thought Animal House sucked, but if a critic/historian with a decent screen presence told me about its context, production history and sprinkled in some trivia, I might at least be able to appreciate it.

It’s maybe a big ask to pull together fans of a genre that’s extremely opinionated, if not bitter to pull together, but I think there’s a chance! We’re losing the battle to keep comedy movies and TV relevant because TV doesn’t see the returns you get for things like America’s Got Talent, and most streaming services just rely on 20 year old sitcoms to pull the weight of their comedy department, but that’s an incredibly short sighted plan. It’s worthwhile to be ahead of the curve on this one and invest in the infrastructure that can hook people with something familiar while developing new shows and movies that will be tomorrow’s comedy comfort food.

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