While the writers for “Web Soup” had to scour the internet for worthy viral clips at first, viewers can now submit their own videos, or videos they have found, to be featured on the show. Receiving tons of videos every day by email and Twitter, Hardwick can’t help but be excited at the amount of great content being thrown to him.
“There’s a real thrill when someone sends you a link and there’s only like 30 views, but it’s an amazing video,” he said. “We’re like California gold miners. We found something before everyone else and we get to show it!”
With the obvious publicity available with this sort of show, and even with YouTube, countless hopefuls are out there trying to break in to the entertainment industry via the Internet.
“I think talent is talent and it can shine in any medium,” Buckley said when asked about the chances someone might have at breaking into traditional media through web videos. “There are advantages and disadvantages in both. I tell people that YouTube is the best platform in the world because there’s such a large audience there waiting to discover you regardless of your talent and ability. I don’t think it can hurt. I know that there are some traditional media people who might look at the web and think ‘Oh, I don’t want to cast or hire this person, they’re more of an Internet personality.’ But honestly, in 2009 most of the mainstream media people, you look at the stupid like, ‘Webby’ type awards and they’re nominating Will Ferrell and Jimmy Fallon and other mainstream people, and I mean, everyone has their foot in the web, so it’s like traditional media is trying to figure out what we already know.”
To “Buck,” the web is a viable career choice. “It’s all very much intermingled now and accepted “" accepted as a legitimate career and a legitimate media,” he said. And a legitimate career is exactly what he has made of it.
Buckley is a full-time, stay at home YouTuber. With over 470,000 subscribers and 170 million views, he is the No. 5 most subscribed to comedian of all time, (and probably the number one most up-beat) and as the creator of the “What the Buck Show,” a weekly entertainment news show, he makes enough money from the YouTube and BlogTV partnership programs to make a career out of it.
Even though there are thousands of YouTube and BlogTV partners out there who can’t quite make it on revenue share alone, Buck accumulates thousands of hits on YouTube weekly and had more than 1,200 viewers online at once recently on a BlogTV show. While YouTube is pretty lucrative for Michael, the attention he has received from his show has provided even more opportunities for him.
“I have some other deals and other things come up, little opportunities for promotion and stuff, but yeah, a lot of good things have come up from YouTube,” Buck revealed.
Of course, Buck didn’t always plan on being an Internet celebrity. “My degree is in psychology. I worked with developmentally disabled kids and then I worked in a concert venue office doing administration work. Then in the summer of 2005, I started doing a show on my local public access channel, just to, you know, have fun and do a show and get some clips and stuff. ‘What The Buck’ was a segment on that show and my cousin started putting those online and it just kind of went out of control from there,” Buck said.
Out of control is exactly what it has gotten. YouTube even asked Michael to create a webinar (a web seminar) for the official YouTube channel instructing users on how to be successful.
Since Blast is no exception to the short attention span issue, we asked Buck to narrow his success down to one factor. “Can I pick two? Because the key to my success is two things. One: I do something that’s topical, so my videos are things that people tend to be looking for online anyway, celebrity humor, and two is definitely my engagement and my interactiveness with the YouTube community. I’m really good friends with and have some strong relationships in the YouTube community, and I think that’s definitely the key to my success.”
While Buckley believes that topical videos are a surefire way to get noticed, Hardwick suggested that having a product makes the difference.
“We played this commercial from Oklahoma City, and the song is actually really catchy, but it’s this rib joint called Mr. Spriggs Barbeque,” Hardwick said. “Then when I went on ‘Jimmy Fallon’ to promote the show they played the Mr. Spriggs theme live on the show. The producers just sent me an article about how Mr. Spriggs is getting all this attention right now because of the spots they put on YouTube. It really helps if you have a product, rather than just ‘I’m a guy who’s going to jump into a pile of cacti!’ They got attention and it helped the fact that they have a business.”
A recent uproar on YouTube was created because of traditional media’s interest in uploading web content. YouTube now holds professional content and full episodes of shows, and the change was seen by some as a threat to the community of users and the nature of the site as a whole.
Buck, however, thinks this change is a good one. “I’m an optimistic person. YouTube has changed my life and been so wonderful for me. YouTube changes every year. In “Ëœ07 it was different than it was in “Ëœ06; the people that were on in “06 were like, ‘YouTube is different now!’ he said. “In ’08 people were like “oh, YouTube is different now!” At the end of the day it’s still about the people who come onto the website and interact on the website.”
“People who make bedroom vlogs, the fact that professional content is on there is not going to steal any of their audience in any way,” Buckley added. “It’ll just make more people come to the website to see the professional content and then they may happen stumble upon you and your kiddie video. So I think we should just look at it as a good thing that professional content wants to be on YouTube along with us” I think there’s room for all of it.”
In the stylings of Take180.com, we’ll leave it up to you. Do you think our story should end with web content and traditional media walking hand-in-hand into the sunset, or do you think all those web celebs out there are just using the Internet as their bridge into television and film the “real” deal in entertainment?
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