40. Having a legal way to watch this show in
America would be fantastic.
—Tim Miller
41. QI has become one of my favorite shows,
simply from the glimpses I can get on
YouTube. I would LOVE to be able to watch
entire seasons on a larger screen as well as
have more people to discuss all the
interesting things with. FIGHT THE
"DUMBING DOWN" OF OUR SOCIETY -
WATCH QI!
—Jenifer Gitzen
43. The wealth of knowledge I have gained from
the small snippets of this show my unworthy
American behind has been able to scrounge
amounts to more than I'd ever hope to
learn from any amount of The Discovery
Channel. Do our populous the favor of
bestowing the great know upon us.
—Jonathan Sprow
44. This is, quite simply, one of the best shows
I've ever seen. […] I was thinking of giving
up my digital cable, but I would completely
reconsider if QI was on the air. You heard
me: it's that's good, I would pay 20 bucks
extra month to make sure that other
people get to experience its brilliance.
—Shawna Leonard
I want to take a proven and amazingly popular product from overseas and import it into the US where it’s currently almost unknown but there is a huge unmet demand for it.
The product is the The Panel game is a TV show format that doesn’t really exist in the US. In the UK and around the world they are huge. As big as reality TV, soap operas, or sit coms. Panel shows are quizzes with celebrities, no prizes and where the points don’t matter.
They are low cost to produce. They draw on a giant talent pool. You can produce them at scale. And they deliver valuable advertising and syndication opportunities.
A little background on the format.
First panel games came from the US in the late thirties. The producers replaced the “civilians” contestants with celebrities to meet audiences and advertisers demand for more content.
[I’ve got a secret – US]
These shows soaked up talent and were training grounds for up and coming actors, comedians as well as academics and politicians of the day.
[What’s my line?]
A huge number of panel shows have been based on commentry of the days news.
This is Front page challenge.
Panel Shows were huge on radio.
The radio show jumped formats to TV with the “Have I got News for you“. Longest running panel show on TV.
Good news week
Mock the week. A satairal take on the news.
29 Minutes of Fame. A celebrity gossip news panel show.
Just a minute.
Sorry I haven’t a clue
Call my bluff was just celebrities playing charades with each other.
Whose Line is it anyway? Comedy Improv.
Guessing games in the old tradition of what’s my line. Unbelievable truth
Would I lie to you
Call my bluff
Panel shows quiz based around sport. Most famous Question of sport with real sporting super stars.
They think it’s all over. A sports quiz for people who don’t play sports.
Never mind the buzzcocks. Music quiz show
Here’s Russel Brand. The Panel show is a prime time vehicle that is constantly being reinvented.
Hosts the award winning Infinite Monkey Cage the BBC Science comedy/science panel show.
Here is Brian Cox and comedian Robin Ince discussing quantum cosmology with comic book legend Alan Moore.
Here they are at Glastonbury. The UK version of Burning Man.
To a sell out crowd.
And closed with Billy Brag.
So that’s the panel show.
Essentially I want to show that there is a huge and apparently insatiable demand for the panel show and the format is robust enough and flexible enough to keep it fresh and accessible for last the eighty years.
And this takes us to QI.
QI is the pinnacle of smart, entertaining, Panel shows. It’s a personal favorite of mine. It has the largest following in the UK across all audiences and demographics. The production team has has won awards, produced DVDs and a series of number one best selling books. The show started in 2003 and is constantly re run in syndication.
The game is this: a rotating panel of celebrities are asked general knowledge questions - pub quiz style. You get points for right answers as well as ones that are quite interesting.
John Lloyd produces QI. One of the most prolific Producers in the UK. And he looks a lot like my Dad.
I can show you epsiodes of QI but instead I want to read you a short piece where John Llloyd explains why he believes we need shows like this:
People are living in a daze: swamped with information, starved of stimulation. They're overworked, anxious, bored and confused.
We live, they say, in The Information Age, yet almost none of the information we think we possess is true. Eskimos do not rub noses. Joan of Arc was not French. Lenin was not Russian. The world is not solid. The steam engine was invented in ancient Greece. The earth has at least seven moons and George Washington's teeth previously belonged to a hippopotamus. The information goes on and on, deeper and wider, stranger and stranger.
And this is the point of QI: it is worthwhile. QI’s goal is to educate, inform and entertain.
No one need ever be bored again. I tracked down John Lloyd and told him I wanted to produce a US version of QI.
He sent me this email.
Let me zoom in
Looks like a great idea on the face of it.
Even if this idea doesn’t go any further I want to let you know that this is one of the high points of my professional career, right here.
Here’s a list of people who have signed a petition to bring the show to the US.
There have been attempts to bring this show to the United States. Comedy Central has tried, PBS tried, Discovery tried, and BBC America tried.
I believe we can do what they haven’t been able to do. We have something they don’t have.
So who’s our competition? Like I say I don’t think that we have any direct competition. Lets look at how who’s playing in the same neighborhood. This isn’t untrodden ground.
Probably the most famous American Panel Game in the last fifty years.
Jerry Seinfeld tried to relaunch the panel game last year too after seeing it’s huge success around the world. Marriage Ref. It hasn’t really been a huge hit. A panel show in the guise of a reality show - US
I think Mythbusters is right in the sweet spot even though it’s a panel game in the traditional sense.
Adam and Jamie take moments in popular cultural and look at world in imaginative ways through the lens of history and science. Challenge your conventional wisdom.
Wait wait don’t tell me. The Peabody award winning topical News panel game on NPR
Recently put on a sold out show at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera house with guests including Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.
A simple concept, light weight to produce, a live show with niche celebrities that has a broad reach through multiple channels and a super engaged audience.
This is the “Heather Gold Show”. Heather is a San Francisco writer, speaker stand up comedian.
She hosts ongoing podcast with San Francisco comedians and geeky, eclectic online celebrities that tackle different topics every episode. She calls this Salon style conversation.
So. What’s our play? Well the Hackerspace challenge opened my eyes to the huge number of diverse communities of smart, creative people that want to come together and share great ideas.
So we take the QI panel show quiz format and invite local bloggers, podcasters, writers, musicians, hackers, artists and stand up comics who have already developed their own significant audiences to participate. We create a weekly or monthly online only video show shot in front of a live audience and distribute it through the both established networks and direct channels. We create sponsorship opportunities within the show and premium content offerings as we build out the value in our own intellectual property.
Sounds familiar? So who do we talk to.
From casual conversation I’ve come to realize that a lot of us appear to know up and coming and established stand up comics. Comedians are the mainstay of these types of shows.
Punch Line Comedy Club
Cobbs Comedy Club
The Purple Onion
The Dark Room Theater
San Francisco Comedy College
Club Deluxe - Pizza & Jazz Club
Bats Improv Theatre
Merlin Mann, Speaker writer, podcaster. Wit, racantuer, bon vivant, man about town of San Francisco’s Digirati.
Adam Lysagor, Lonely Sandwich, film maker, funniest podcast I listen to You look nice today.
MG Siegler. Journalist. The only good thing about Techcrunch.
Andy Baio, Waxy – bringing social media collaboration platforms to the federal government
Kevin Chang. UI at Twitter. Writes and lectures on the art form of comic books.
Ze Frank video podcaster and aspiring actor.
Nick Douglas. Former editor in chief of Valleywag and part time Zombie.
Chris Hardwick. Creator of the Nerdist podcast, Wired associate editor, stand up comedian and G4 TV show host.
So what tools do we have at our disposal.
I believe we can shoot a cheap pilot and start talking to looking at a combination of models.
Revision3 has the TV station model that we’re familiar with.
Been trying to reach out to talk to Mevio over on Second street.
Barney Walfork-Smith. A British Rev3. Specializing in personality driven celebrity short format content.
Social media syndication tools. 25 social sites, $500 a month to manage distribution and optimize Video SEO and meta data testing.
Remember these guys. Acquired by Adicon. Spoke to Dave Lavine. Premium Video content production, content network and syndication programs whether we either we bring the sponsor or they create can the partnerships for us.
Russel Wang. 1.8 million users.
There are other dedicated channels, like the XBOX marketplace. The Guild, an independent online scripted show, is the poster child for innovative distribution channels.
Shannon Nelson. ER, West Wing, Kirstie Alley and Kirsten Dunst. Star of Gold. An online scripted show about a group of Dungeons and Dragons game players.
David Nett. Producer and creator of Gold and it’s spin off, Night of the Zombie King.
Member of International Academy of Web TV.
Should we create our own presence and then build from there.
DVD out for sale and Season 2 in development plus the fact that the show just won a Parsec Award at GenCon. These guys have explored a lot of alternative distribution deals.
Concept Description – Bring underrepresented Panel games to the the US market.
Opportunity is there is a huge demand for online video and intellectually stimulating content
The Product is a episodic, online video show recorded live.
Targeting to begin with web savvy creative members of the digirati and later mass audiences through emerging channels
The benefits of the show is education wrapped in humor that nourishes the soul.
Competitive advantage is we can bring a proven, fully formed product to a market and become a leader in the space.
This idea started with this guy. Ben and his portable work bench.
And these guys. How much you bench
Like Everyday carry or ratemynetworkdiagram. People want to share something that’s personal to them.
The Day walker. Wesley Snipes in the 1998 New Line Cinema classic Blade.
He had a bad ass Nihonto, his Japanese sword.
Thinkgeek already makes an umbrella styled with a handle that looks like the hilt of a ninja sword.
I want to put a business card holder there.
Works with anything you wear.
Clips on or attaches with a series of small magnets.
Find out the stories behind road side memorials. Give families a way to keep a memory alive.
Find memorials on a map or mobile app. Track dangerous highways and help community groups improve traffic legislation.
Online prediction market for cultural movements. A virtual stock market where you can bid on the valuation of trends.
Track and predict memes an earn status in the community and real world rewards.
Jean Reno. Starred as Leon in the 1994 French production Professional.
Some times you need some one to take out the trash
You’re having an debate or argument online. You don’t have the facts at hand or you can’t express your point. You go to the craigslist of intellectual assassins site and recruit someone that is an expert in the field you need—Tarantino films, eighties hair bands and provide a conclusive argument for why your point of view is correct.
