On Point For Love  

Writing An Internet Comedy Radio Show – On Point For Radio

On Point For Love, which now approaches its 44th episode, was not the project I originally envisioned. I originally didn’t have any vision. In order to create, this modestly successful Internet radio show on love, sex and relationships based on nothing more than a friend’s poem about her frustration with sex, love and relationships required creation from scratch. Stand-up comedians rarely create a script, but this was meant to be a radio show. So the commitment was deeper and required more sacrifices and planning. The first was reserving a day to air the show, because everything else had to be based around the date we chose to air the weekly show. We originally chose Thursday’s at nine in the evening because we felt on Friday and Saturday there would be too much competition. We also felt any other day would be too early in the week. I imagine it was much the same reason that NBC created the infamous must see Thursday, which included the line up of The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers and Night Court. We choose a weekly broadcast, because quite frankly, neither of us would have the energy to write a daily show without hiring writers. And while we can both afford to hire writers, they wouldn’t be good writers. You get what you pay for in this world.

With the air date set at 9:00pm each Thursday, we choice February 14th, 2008 to air the pilot because we felt that Valentine’s Day was a good day to coincide with the first episode considering the subject matter. We debated between airing the show for and hour or a half hour. In the end we chose a half hour because both Rosee and I believe it’s better to leave the audience begging for more than to go away wishing you hadn’t spoken so damn much. That’s a lesson I learned the first time I picked up an amateur magic book. It’s stuck with me ever since. That said, Blog Talk Radio also recommends that you have an hour of material if you intend to do a half-hour broadcast. We didn’t have half that much. We had fifteen minutes maybe, the first time we went to air. As a result, we learned to repeat ourselves a lot. However, we did take the time for Rosee to record the poetry verses at a professional recording studio that were meant to be the centerpiece of the show for that first episode rather than just read them on the air. We probably did fifteen takes for each verse. I don’t know why we thought we would ever keep that up. Had that been a weekly part of the show, looking back, the show would have lasted a week. The truth is just getting Rosee to the recording studio I built it my house was a chore where the means didn’t justify the ends. So, in the end, she chose to simply read the new verses on the air each week, which lends itself more to the less structured nature of talk radio in the first place.

Our first episode, which was ironically not scripted at all, was almost completely dedicated to explaining the show’s script to the audience. We introduced the ten pre-recorded verses up front and then explained the evolution of the poem. That’s when we realized that we’d need a whole more to fill in a half hour show. In order to keep the show focused on love, sex and relationships we started searching out news stories based on the subject. We tackled Larry Craig, the Mariylin Monroe Tape {which we now know is a fake, our bad} and Ashley Dupree’s stunning singing voice. Part of our problem early on was there was no real focus. There was also no real connection between the verses and the articles themselves. The title of the early shows like Introducing The Email & Call In Segment and Looking Back on the Clinton Sex Scandal was the equivalent of saying, “Hey we’re gonna try this tonight, what do y’all think?” They were either outdated news stories, that we didn’t really talk about or what we were going to try that night to make the show work. Because, in the first five episodes we were focusing on far too many news stories, we were often forced to move onto another topic just to keep on script just as the news story was getting interesting. The rest of the time we compensated by choosing a single subject without any strategy to lay it out across the bulk of a thirty-minute show. Three minutes may be the optimal time for intercourse, but that fact is hard to stretch into a thirty minute show.

We started to get our bearing after talking about Rolando’s Rolando's escapade with a girl he later found out was a guy. According to the local police, the footballer alleges that the transvestites then tried to extort money from him. This was followed by a discussion of the latest Alexandre Dupree story, if time permits. We had so many talking points that we had to add, “if time permits,” to the show description. Meanwhile, I was also concerned that the nature of the show, it was about sex, might attract callers from the “I’m the insane member of my family,” side of the tracks. We got lucky the first time we had a caller; he wrote his own poetry to read back to Rosee. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but I could tell by the nervousness in his voice we still had control. That was reassuring and flattering at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, the crazies eventually came out, but we weren’t forced to deal with them first. Instead we got introduced to fellow hosts like Indies Urban World that did seem to have an honest appreciation for the show. Despite the unfocused nature of the show, we did purchase the domain On Point For Love earl on. Unlike the show itself, my reason for the purchase was focused. The last thing we wanted to do was to make the phrase “On Point For Love” valuable and then have someone else purchase the domain to take advantage of the traffic flow we’d built up. The official website, much like the show itself, slowly evolved over time.

It was around episode thirteen that we really started to get our real bearings for the show. Keep in mind that we had to do the show for almost three months before we developed any clear focus at all. In this episode Rosee and Rosemary discuss an article in the India Times that reveals sex burns up to 300 calories an hour – about the same as running 15 minutes on a treadmill or playing a spirited game of squash – that would be for most people who aren’t working out vigorously the same as ½ hour at the gym. Yes, it’s somewhat ironic that we were now going to the India Times for relationship advice. I really though your average Indian would be too uptight to turn good sex into a newspaper article. But with thirteen clear talking points, it was easy to pinpoint what Rosee should talk about and the questions those points should illicit had there been any callers on the line in the early days of the show. Anyhow, for this episode we not only stopped trying to put so many news stories into one show, we broke the news story we did have into two episodes. This allowed us to talk about half the health benefits of sex in the first show and the second half the following week without feeling rushed.

We also developed a number of other sections to fill out the show creating a basic skeleton for the show. We created a standard introduction for the show. And we stopped changing it with every new show. Looking back, I’ve never seen a sitcom open with a new song each week. Something has to feel familiar to keep people coming back. One of the things I like best about Miss Laff A-Lot’s show is how much you feel like you’re in a comfortable place when the show starts up. Most of the other shows I grew to enjoy on BTR, had a similar opening feel that warmly stated, “Welcome back.” We also added in a trivia question. We asked it at the beginning of the show and answered it as the show came to a close. It’s a technique Rosee noticed that was used by radio stations to keep people listening throughout the entire show. For much the same reason, we stopped doing all the poetry verses at the top of the show and we put the other half at the end of the show. And we sandwiched that content between the trivia question, which by about episode twenty-five we tried to keep related to the news story. We also started to relate the On Point For Love Verse to the news article we chose for that week’s show. It’s a technique used by musicians who write concept albums that makes those albums successful long after the buzz of a new release has worn off. Thus, if the topic was about how Cocaine and sex have the same effect on people, we wrote verses about drugs. If the subject was how sex causes amnesia we wrote verses about forgetting things. Originally for the Amnesia episode Rosee was going to keep reading the same verse over ten times, but we chickened out of that idea. We also tried to order those verses to tell a story. In a similar vein, if we added in a mock commercial, we’d asked ourselves, “Who would really sponsor this show?” And then we wrote that mock commercial as if that industry had really got involved. The more connected and real the show feels, the better both Rosee and I felt about that creation after it had aired.

By now we also had a show template. It gave us a structure for each show. The repeated content was already written out. There were also about ten mandatory things to fill in each week, sort of a fill in this blank. The sections of that outline included the opening song, the introduction to the show, advice section, the trivia question, the outfit joke, the mock commercial, an introduction to the article, the poetry verses, the expanded news story, the answer to the trivia question, the second set of verses and the closing song. We also had optional sections that included thank-yous [to give on air shout outs to anyone who said anything nice to us ever], prize give aways [since Rosee is a regular at the Comedy Store and had access to tickets] and extra jokes than we almost never had a chance to try out because the show was already top heavy as it was. Everything eventually became interconnected and was woven around the news story, which we considered the meat and centerpiece of each episode. Therefore the strategy became, find the news story then write the verses, then fill in every other blank. We both felt it was important to make sure there was an abundance of factual information in the show, because the FCC loves to censor people who like to be titillating just for titillation sakes. We also felt the more factual the show was, the higher control we’d have when the crazies called in, and they eventually would. Our schedule involved writing the verses over the weekend. For the average show we prepared forty verses and then narrowed those verses down to sixteen we would use. Then we narrowed those eighteen into eight verses and eight alternates. By the time we had a clear vision of the show, we also scaled the number of verses from ten to eight. This was done primarily to save time. But it was also done because with ten verses and a clearer focus at the center of the show, we almost always felt rushed. We still could do ten verses, but you should never do something just because you can, especially on the air. We usually had five outfit jokes and five mock commercials to choose from as well. It’s basically the rule for stand-up comedy cut in half. Most stand-up comics write ten bits for every bit they keep. Writing is a little more casual, so in comic radio, the jokes really don’t need to come so fast or furious. By Tuesday we tried to have the show outline finished so that on Wednesday we could rehearse over the phone.

Of course, being live radio, being the type of show you rehearse does open you up to problems. Every now and then, you’ll get a caller that’s either rude, unwilling to stay focused on the subject, sexually frustrated and assumes that your show is only about getting him off, completely insane or even worse: all four the same time. Now this is uncomfortable, because as the guy manning the switchboard I do feel responsible for protecting my friend of seven years. And there’s a fine line between being flirtatious and down right sick. You know when a person crosses it, but they rarely cross it all at once. There’s simply this nagging feeling, this person is nuts and this is really getting out of hand. When it did happen, I always waited too long before interrupting and bringing the show back on course. While I was afraid of pissing off the caller, in the end I realized I would be pissing off someone who brought no productive energy to the show. They weren’t discussing the topic. They were simply making on air passes as Rosee, without any shame or respect for her at all. I usually handled the situation by simply politely telling Rosee we needed to go back to the script or asking the questions about the script that would bring the caller back to what we wanted to talk about. Over time, both Rosee and I got much better than this. Of course my initial instinct as a comic was not to be polite to assholes. It was to wipe the floor with any nutcase who called in. I remember one guy who somehow told us he was came to an ex lovers door holding a drawer full off kitchen knifes but he wanted to be polite so he knocked. To this day, I’m not sure to this day if I should have confronted him on his completely screwed up logic. But instead, I opted to continually break in and steer the conversation back to the script. I also made a rule that day about when we would take phone calls, only when we were talking about the news stories. We wouldn’t take them at the top of the show or as the last verses were being read, unless I recognized the number. Considering the nature of our show, this allowed the audience to interact while still giving us considerably more control of the content. We also made it clear in the introduction that’s when we’d start taking the calls to discourage the people who meant to call in without anything meaningful to say. Additionally, we used the introduction to set up preview the subject matter of the show to give people plenty of time to decide first if they wanted to call in and secondly, and potentially more importantly, to consider what they really wanted to say.

By episode thirty-three we were experimenting with political incorrectness, though it would seem that we did that by the very nature of the show we chose to create. The Politically Incorrect Truths About Love became such fertile ground for comedy radio that it also became our first three-part episode. The news story itself lent itself to a discussion between the host and the listeners. You simply brought up the politically incorrect truth. We asked the listener, why do you think that is? Then, after the spontaneous response, we went into the science behind the story. We also decided to spread that topic over six weeks to keep the repetition of the subject matter from getting to monotonous. By episode thirty-four we had the basics down. We knew build the show around a specific type of article, the kind that lent itself to discussion. These were usually articles that left the listener thinking, “No way, but that kind of makes mistakes.” We also knew how to tie everything in the show together around that article. That said, we never forced the content around that article if one particular subjection didn’t fit. As we moved on, we found stories about the connection between sex and amnesia and the world records of love that was built around a video of sex-related superlatives I found at Break dot Com. These stories didn’t lend themselves to the exact same discussion format as the Politcially Incorrect Truths About Love. However, we could always seem to find a similar manner to tell the story, if we found the right article for the content of the show.

We also tried to stay current whenever possible. The season finale will be a Christmas special. With the United States elections ending on November 4th, 2008, we made sure we finished up the two-part episode on United State’s sex scandals as the United States elected its first black president in the 200 years since its inception. In fact we purposely put off part two of the US Political Scandals of Love long enough so that it would coincide with those elections. For episode forty-two, we put together our first hour special on all the loopy laws of love. We aired that show despite frustrating problems with the switchboard, which crashed just as the show went to air, probably costing us any live listeners and call in guests we might have received. In this show, we talked about legislating morality. We talked about the loopy laws about sex, like the one that makes it illegal to have sex with a porcupine in Florida. In the end, we got passed the technical difficulties, and got every one we needed on the line through constant email and communication until everyone realized that the technical errors were now fixed. While it did end up being one of the best shows, you do have to fast forward past five minutes of blank space. But then again, no show has included something I didn’t wish had gone differently as we went to air.

What have we learned over the last year? Doing an Internet radio show is not like doing stand-up comedy. Every show requires a core substance to build the comedy around. And that core substance usually comes from the day’s current events, as tied to love, sex and relationships. There is a lot more preparation and rehearsal involved than there is stand-up comedy. It also requires more coordinating skills and more promotional finesse. You need the skill to get all the critical elements to call in at the right time. And even if they’re close friends, you’re not guaranteed anyone will be paying attention to the clock. You have to have the skill to keep the show on script and spontaneous at the same time. You have to know how to allow people to call in and still maintain the direction of the show. I’ve learned not to drink a liter of soda before I open the switchboard for the show because there’s no way to go to the bathroom and keep the audience the audience from hearing a flush. And when that does happen, that’s either a comment on the caller or the show. Either way, your better off saving Dr. Pepper for after the show. I’ve learned Blog Talk Radio deletes the audio you upload to your switchboard if it hasn’t been used for a while; and I learned that one the hard way. I learned if you don’t type your pin number quick enough, BTR’s automated system will think that you entered it wrong, making you enter slower the next time causing you to get disconnected all together. I learned that AT&T sometimes cuts off when you’re in the middle of the show. Can you hear me now my ass? Ironically, you can be cut off as host from your show while your show’s switchboard still connecting your callers and airing the show despite the fact that you’re not there. We also learned if you work really hard on the quality of your show without doing anything to promote it agents, XM radio and lovers who want to make you their next sexual conquest will beat down your door en masse.

Okay, that last statement isn’t true at all. Back to the RSS podcast directories to see how many times I can enter the RSS feed before the carpal tunnel syndrome kicks in.