AP: Comics consider getting websites!

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on July 11th, 2007

That’s right. Jake Coyle, writing for AP, says that, “…comedians are increasingly feeling the need to have an online presence.” Check the calendar, dude– it’s 2007!

Coyle also says that:

There was once a stigma attached to having a Web site as a comedian. Standups have often felt that a following can only be respectably gained at the mike.

Say what?! We’ve never– ever– heard this sentiment expressed by any comedian. There has never been a stigma attached to having a website as a comedian. If there was, we were never aware of it.

We put one up in late 1996. And we thought we were behind the curve!

We’re not bragging, mind you, we’re merely saying that we’ve been aware of the WWW’s potential for promoting comedians, for communicating and sharing information between comedians and for gathering information about the comedy business. We were out of the gate rather early and we encouraged others to hop onboard the internet.

In March of 1999, we began work on the first issue of SHECKYmagazine.com and eventually launched the mag on April 1. And we worried that maybe we were late to the party. We were well aware, however, of a website’s potential to disseminate information to fans and comedians and others in the industry. And we were fascinated by the possibilities for self-expression via the website. In our early days, we had as many as nine columnists writing for the magazine. As it turns out, they were early “bloggers.”

After the preposterous “stigma” statement, the article goes on to provide a rather thin list of comics’ sites, with capsule descriptions of some. Of course, the comics are fairly well-known. Perhaps there’s a longer, more detailed version of the story floating around out there. This one is so anemic as to be a waste.

Occasionally, early on, when the cost of a site was much higher than it was now, some comics dismissed the website idea. They downplayed the value of a site. This was a classic example of “sour grapes,” of course. Once the cost plummeted, the stampede started.

Now it is fairly standard for a comedian to have a website, parked at a domain that he owns (affording him personalized email addresses) with a MySpace presence as well. Some also regularly post to a weblog. Not everyone is using their site, their MySpace, their blog to the maximum potential, but, compared to how things were in 1996, we’re all better connected and we’re all much more capable of promoting our standup comedy and other projects to most of the inhabitants of the planet.

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