Why More Comedians Are Putting Their Specials On YouTube

“Everybody’s got to hear how special they are,” Chicago-based comedian and WGN Morning News sports anchor Pat Tomasulo set up a bit in his new YouTube special, Pat Tomasulo: What A Time To Be Alive, with. “[If] you don’t, they’ll just come right out and tell you. One of my buddies posted on Facebook… he writes, ‘Feeling a little bit down today, could you guys say something about me to get me going, to do what I need to do?’

“I was like, ‘Uh, your rent is due next week; get off your a**. Did that get you doing? I’m not on here to inspire you, I’m here to look up high school girlfriends…”

Tomasulo is helping keep a trend, set by other comics a few years ago, in tact by putting his special on YouTube, rather than court and rely on TV networks or streaming services.

“I think the main reason I decided to put it on YouTube is because NetflixNFLX
didn’t return a single one of my emails,” Tomasulo, who already has 154,000-plus views of his special in just a few months, joked. “Had Netflix shown even the slightest bit of interest, I would have made everyone pay to see this special.”

Speaking more candidly, Pat revealed he was following the trend that has paid dividends to fellow stand ups and allowed comedy audiences easy, and free, access to their content.

“In all honesty, this is just the way the business is going right now,” Tomasulo replied. “Some of the biggest, up-and-coming names in comedy have all been releasing their specials on YouTube. To be honest, I think this is what a majority of comedy fans expect now, and it’s paid off, given the number of new people who’ve discovered my comedy through YouTube and the various social media channels I’ve uploaded content.”

Pat also likes the level of audience engagement YouTube offers.

“The other great thing about YouTube is that with the streaming services you really have no idea how people feel about your work,” the comic said. “But with YouTube you get to read comments like ‘This guy sucks and should die.’”

Comics who’ve posted their specials to YouTube before Tomasulo saw lucrative returns in playing the long game with the established video sharing site.

Stand up Mark Normand posted his special, Out to Lunch, to YouTube two months into the pandemic and now it sports north of 10 million views two years later.

“It was a huge failure,” Normand quipped of the special back in March of 2021 “I was trying to sell this hour. I’d been doing this hour all over the road for years. I’d go back to Denver and people would come back and see me and go, ‘We saw this exact same hour basically a year ago,’ and you kind of go, ‘Yeah, this is getting embarrassing.’

“So I said, ‘Alright, let’s try to sell it to Netflix, or HBO, or AmazonAMZN
, whatever.’ I’m not famous, I’ve got no juice, so no one’s buying it and rightfully so, I don’t know.

“I said, ‘I bet if we make it, I bet if we shoot it ourselves, looking good… digital, 4k, lighting, color correct, they’ll buy it, because we did the heavy lifting,’ and they still didn’t buy it.

“So I said, ‘Hey, it came out pretty good, let’s put it on YouTube,’ and I was bummed. I just went in all the way on YouTube like, ‘Let’s make a trailer, let’s promote it. They’re not going to buy it, so it’s all on me now.’ And it actually went well.

“Now looking back, so glad I own it, so glad I did it myself. Look, [making] a couple hundred (thousand) on Netflix would be exciting and obviously I haven’t made that, but I own it, I can chop it up, I can share it easily. I have this underdog kind of vibe to it so people feel like they discovered me or whatever it is, so it kind of worked out in the end.”

Being patient and taking an initial hit to the old pocket book with his special was the right move for Mark, who eventually booked more shows, played bigger venues, sold more tickets, and got more social media followers following the release of his special.

Other comedians like Shane Gillis (Live in Austin), Joe List (This Year’s Material), and Stavros Halkias (Live at the Lodge Room) have also garnered millions of views with their YouTube specials this year alone.