Timing It Out

I used to really enjoy the show "Inside the Actor's Studio." Sure, at the height of its popularity critics may have accused the show of being pretentious but that is only because it was. But, honestly, how could it not be a little full of itself? Acting is one of those luxury activities (like writing) which isn't actually necessary to advance society. As such the people who make a living doing it need to toe the line when talking about it between showing that they are passionate about the craft without taking themselves too seriously (such as referring to it as "the craft". Now I want to kick my own ass), because then they look as though they have no perspective. Too often this show allowed its guest to ramble on about their jobs as if they were important even though at the end of the day all an actor is really doing is playing pretend and reading words that another person wrote. There is no need to put actors up on a pedestal or give their words any weight yet this show often allowed them to start believing their own hype. Despite that, it was nice to occasionally see actors in a longer-form interview in which they weren't trying to plug a movie or escape without saying anything too controversial. Often it was the most open any of them had ever been in public and since they were talking about their favorite subjects (themselves), all the actors were willing to go into great details about how they got to where they are now. In the end, like all popular TV shows "Inside the Actor's Studio" eventually started to lag in the ratings, mostly because the last few episodes appeared to be scraping the bottom of the barrel. (I mean, P. Diddy? You want to have him be on a show about music I would be all for that but acting? I'll pass.) I admit I haven't watched the show in years to the point I am not even sure it is on anymore.

Clearly I can't miss it too much if I am not willing to go looking for it on my TV dial and that is because the only episodes of "Inside the Actor's Studio" I truly wanted to watch were the ones which featured comedians since I obviously find comedy fascinating. The reason I no longer need the Actor's studio is that the show's lengthy interview style has been copied by many podcasts (if comedy is your thing there are dozens of free comedy podcasts to pick from) and most of the famed questions are asked in one form or another. One of the questions I am always interested to get a perspective on is whether comedy can be learned of if you have to be born with it. Personally I think you have to be born with it because I have certainly seen evidence that nurture isn't that important when nature doesn't produce even results. I'll explain - I once worked with two brothers and even though they grew up in the same house with the same parents they had vastly different comedy skills. One of the brothers routinely had us rolling in the aisles with a hilarious story while the other could bring any joke session to a screeching halt with his awful attempt at a humor. If there is such a thing as a comedy gene it clearly skipped a family member. The only thing I will about say in the argument of whether or not comedy can be taught is that it helps to grow up in an area where you are allowed to develop your natural abilities because the timing of telling a joke is a skill which needs refinement. And this week I was reminded it certainly can't be anticipated.

The other day I fell down the wormhole which is the internet, searching for entertainment. I eventually landed on YouTube, watching clip after clip from one comedian or another. I was slightly annoyed at the commercials which came before about every third video, some of which were almost as long as the entire bit I wanted to watch but the good news is that most of them allowed me to skip to the end after I had put in my required 15 seconds. Everything was going fine until I came upon an entire comedy special which someone had uploaded. The entire hour was there for my amusement and since there was nothing better on to watch I sat down and prepared myself to laugh. Almost immediately I notice that there were little yellow markers on the video's timeline, indicating commercial breaks. This often happens when you watch shows online so I guess it was inevitable that it would eventually find its way to YouTube. Also it seemed fair since this clip was nearly an hour long and I wasn't paying for it, so the least I could do was sit through a few commercials. The problem is that very quickly it became obvious that YouTube has a software program which just inserts commercial breaks at a pre-determined interval with no regard to where the show may be in that time. Sometimes it was just off, such as when the ad started right after the clip faded up from black on what was a TV break on the original broadcast. But the rest of the time it was blatantly bad with the clip cutting to an ad in the middle of sentences or during punchlines. It was very annoying and even though the clip was free it still made me feel like I was getting ripped off.

Look, I am not saying YouTube shouldn't have ads. They don't maintain this site for their health - they are in this to make money and running ads during popular clips is the best way to do it. Also four, thirty-second commercials aren't too high of a price when you remember the average person sit through 8 minutes of commercials for every half-hour of regular TV they watch and that most of the online ads allow you to skip to the end about halfway through. But even with that YouTube needs to be more careful about when they place these breaks. I mean, blindly throwing ads up at a set time regardless of what is coming on screen shows a lack of professionalism because it looks like you take no pride in the details of your work. After all, there is a reason that radio stations hire people to figure out what time commercials should run and which commercials should go in each break. There is a science to it. I know YouTube has thousands of videos uploaded on it every day and hiring a team of programmers who are require to sit through every single one of them and figure out where they breaks should go would be a waste of everyone's time and skill. I'm not asking them to do that because there is no need to spend that much time editing a clip which is only going to get watched by the uploader and nine of his friends. What I do want is for them to take a little more care when applying ads to the clips which they know are going to be popular (and I am sure they have an algorithm which lets them know exactly that). This video had a couple hundred thousand views so I think it would be worth a little extra attention. Trust me, it would work out better for them because comedy nerds like me will be much more open to sharing a clip which isn't ruined by poor timing. For example, I was going to post that video on this blog but decided against it when I saw how annoying the ad breaks were. I may not have a ton of followers but I know how internet commerce works - every pageview is worth it so YouTube should go back and fix this issue as soon as possible. They say the key to a good joke is timing and right now YouTube's timing sucks.