The New York Comedy Festival had plenty to talk about this year, from a controversial Bill Cosby show to a topless set by Tig Notaro. But its most prominent inclusion wasn’t a standup show at all. Its big coup was in drawing Comedy Central’s hit late night show @midnight away from its comfy Los Angeles confines for a week of shows in the Big Apple.
The road trip gave the show a chance to feature New York-based comics like Judah Friedlander and Jim Norton, and welcome a slew of celebrity guests – Jon Hamm, Ben Stiller, Gilbert Gottfried, Stephen Colbert, and Broad City’s Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson all appeared during the week. The show even included a few of the more aggressive stand-ups that New York tends to produce, a decision that ended up backfiring when former Howard Stern-sidekick Artie Lange began tweeting aggressive sexual fantasies to ESPN anchor Cari Champion only hours before he was due to tape @midnight. The network quickly bumped him.
Billed as using “social media as the catalyst and a fake game show as the setting”, the show features three comedian panelists riffing on social media posts and internet memes in a endless supply of simple games, such as writing taglines for peculiar Etsy products or guessing which absurd-seeming event listing is actually on the books. Points are awarded for correct or funny answers – presenter Chris Hardwick’s excited yell of “Points!” has become the show’s de facto catchphrase – and the triumphant panelist is deemed to have “won the internet” for the next 23.5 hours.
The comedian contestants are informed of that night’s topics only a few hours before showtime. “You’re really forced to write really quickly to make a quality show,” says Hari Kondabolu, a New York stand-up who made his second appearance on the show during the festival. “Before the first time I did it, I was hearing [from friends who had been on: buzz in, and definitely prepare. This is not just who’s the funniest. You’re writing jokes about a wide range of things, and having options is important. And if you see a moment, take it.”
“A good panelist checks off multiple boxes ... topical joke writing skills, social media and pop culture knowledge and strong improv chops,” says Bart Coleman, the show’s senior talent producer. “The ability to riff and banter with their fellow panel mates is super important. We don’t want guests feeling like they’re on Jeopardy and can only speak when they buzz in or Chris asks them a question.”
@midnight has clear roots in the British panel show model, a format that has failed to take hold in the US until now. An avowed Anglophile, Hardwick describes the show as a “game show engine about the internet through the lens of stand-up comedy with the soul of a British panel show”. Those UK shows have long been a stepping-stone for rising British comedians, and @midnight has taken on that role as well, mixing big names like “Weird Al” Yankovic and Jim Gaffigan with up-and-coming favorites like Ron Funches and Ali Wong. The show also highlights improvisers like Heather Anne Campbell, who have few places to shine on television.
Taping four shows a week with a writing staff about half the size of most late-night shows, one of @midnight’s core strengths is its ability to adapt to different comedic styles, allowing them to use comedians of varying backgrounds. “They invite you to add your own flavour,” says Bridget Everett, a comedian and cabaret performer who won her first appearance on the show during its New York run. “They’re like, ‘Don’t be afraid to do your thing and go crazy.’ They have all different kinds of people and I think they appreciate all different kinds of comedy.”
Comedians who excel in the format can find themselves coming back frequently, an invaluable about of screen time for a working comic. “When you’re doing stand-up, you can’t be on TV all the time,” Kondabolu says, noting comedians like Doug Benson and Nikki Glaser, who have appeared 12 and 10 times respectively. “You can’t do that many spots of stand-up on TV in a year. This is incredible exposure.”
On the surface, @midnight doesn’t seem like a natural fit with the Comedy Central shows that it follows – its playful enthusiasm contrasts with the snarky, satirical institutions of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. But it was an immediate winner when it premiered in October 2013, drawing an enviably young, male audience in droves and giving the network a solid 90-minute block of late night programming for the first time.
The show’s immense success can be seen on Twitter every night, when its #HashtagWars game explodes, inviting viewers (or anyone else on the internet) to participate in thematic games – the “winning” tweet is recognized on the show the following night. Recent examples include #MyLoveLifeIn3Words (winner: “Jesus, mom, knock!!!”) or #CheeseSongs (winner: “Roquefort the Casbah”). “It’s true interaction,” says Kondabolu. “It break the wall between audience and performer in a way that I haven’t seen other panel shows do.”
The hashtag wars have become a ritual fan favorite; Hardwick says their hashtags are often mentioned hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter. “It’s just like a reliable thing that’s there for people to play around with and engage the pun centers of their brain,” he says.
Still, Hardwick says he had no idea the show would hit in the way it did. “You don’t know how people are going to react to things,” he says. “We can’t control it. With the digital culture, you can spend a month crafting what you think is the most genius video to post on YouTube and it gets 1,000 views, and then off-handedly you capture, like, a duck sneezing, and it gets 20 million views. You just don’t know.”
