Can 400 Comedians Convince You to Keep Netflix?

For a few years now, Netflix has marketed its stand-up comedy programming with the cheeky slogan “Netflix is a Joke,” attaching the words to everything from social media handles and billboards to a massive comedy festival it debuted two years ago. The ironic humor of the phrase, of course, is that there is absolutely nothing funny about the platform’s towering role in the world of stand-up comedy. While TikTok and YouTube have helped launch more than a few careers by now, Netflix is where the most successful comedians go when they quickly want to reach a global audience — and get paid accordingly.

The size and scale of the streamer’s stand-up business will be on display in a major way starting next week with the return of the aforementioned Netflix is a Joke Festival, a 12-day (and night) marathon of more than 500 shows spread across nearly three dozen Los Angeles venues that will spotlight multiple generations of comics, from Gen X legends (Chris Rock, Sarah Silverman, Katt Williams) and modern superstars (John Mulaney, Ali Wong) to more recent breakouts (Matt Rife, Fortune Feimster) and a slew of younger stars most non-comedy nerds would need to Google before identifying.

As with the 2022 fest, almost all of these events will be accessible only to folks who are in LA and have a ticket. But unlike two years ago, Netflix will be giving its nearly 300 million global subscribers the opportunity to watch a trio of the biggest shows on the schedule live as they happen: A Katt Williams concert; a celeb-packed roast of Tom Brady; and a six-night sketch/variety series called John Mulaney Presents Everybody’s in L.A. in which Mulaney is expected to interact with dozens of the biggest names performing at the festival (or who are just in town for the week). While Netflix taped a few events from the 2022 fest for later streaming (and will do so again this year), the streamer hadn’t yet gotten into the live TV business back then. Now it’s jumping in with both feet, planning one live event over each of eight consecutive nights.

Overseeing this huge undertaking: Robbie Praw, the exec who’s responsible for running Netflix’s broader stand-up comedy business and who has also played a huge role in shaping the streamer’s success in the space since joining the platform eight years ago this spring. While the festival itself is a complicated patchwork quilt of programming (once again: 500-plus shows), adding in more than a week of live broadcasts on a platform which barely a year ago buckled under the burden of a Love Is Blind reunion special is surely supersizing the stress levels for Praw and his team. And yet when Vulture caught up with the Montreal native by phone earlier this week, he was decidedly calm and reasonably confident the sequel to the Netflix is a Joke Festival will be more The Empire Strikes Back than Staying Alive. During our roughly 45-minute conversation, Praw explained the decision to lean into livestreams as well as the broader goals of the festival. He also talked about how stand-up on Netflix has (and hasn’t) changed over the past decade); why the streamer is still writing big checks to certain comics; and how a new generation of comics raised on social media — like Matt Rife — are changing the business.

So one of the big differences between this edition of the Netflix is a Joke Festival is that you’ll be streaming live from the event on eight of its 12 nights. Why did you decide to embrace live in such a big way? 
We had our first live show just a year ago last March 4th, which was with Chris Rock. That was such an exhilarating thing, because when you’re sitting in a room watching stand-up comedy, part of the joy is, “Hey, what’s going to happen? What is this person going to say?” Experiencing that live I think really plusses up the entire experience and really works well for the genre.

For sure. But if I could play devil’s advocate for a moment, there are some trade-offs for the home audience, too, aren’t there? The presentation might not be as polished, or there could be technical snafus which throw off a performer’s pacing. And given that most viewing will take place down the road on-demand, the argument against live is that you maybe hurt the long-tail of the project when it’s not edited and polished. 
Yeah, but I think what we’re trying to replicate is the feeling of sitting in that room. And just to be clear, we launch a great amount of stand-up all year in the way that you just described. This is another way to experience comedy, which is more similar to the way that it’s experienced in comedy clubs and theaters and arenas every night around the world. It doesn’t negate the other ways that people like watching stand-up comedy.

And the upside for you as a platform is that “live” also serves as a great promotional and marketing hook for the project.
Of course. We saw this with Chris Rock: The conversation is happening with a critical mass of people at the same time. It’s a nice way to kick off a show which is going to be staying on Netflix for a long time.

The three projects you’re doing live this year all feel very distinct: A sketch comedy series, a big stand-up special, and a roast. Did you do that purposely so you could better understand what kind of comedy event works best in a live format – to sort of maximize what you learn about different audiences? 
I think it’s more about three ways to entertain members. The thing that we’ve learned most about stand-up over the 10 years we’ve been doing specials now is how different people’s tastes are. I think it’s something that in music we seem to understand a little bit more — that reggae is different from hip-hop or classical or whatever. And I think that this is a little bit of recognition that different folks like different stand-up specials. Certainly some folks will love all three of these things and some folks will find one of these three things to be their favorite thing. So I mean, sure, we will have some learnings. But this is really about how the tastes of our audiences are varied.

The first live event is Mulaney’s series, which will start on Friday, May 3, and then return for five more nights the following Monday. Why kick off that way? 
This show that we’re doing with Mulaney really represents a lot of the heart and soul of the festival itself. I mean, it’s called Everybody’s in L.A. because everyone’s here for the festival. So we thought it made a lot of sense to have John kick off the festival. For people in L.A., you can’t miss that this festival is happening. We’re in so many venues and there’s so much publicity for it in Los Angeles. But to our comedy-loving members around the world, we thought starting off with John just made a lot of sense.

You haven’t given out too many details about what the show will be. Can you give me a better idea of what audiences will see when they watch, including how long each episode will be? 
Most of that should come from John and not me because he’s really been over every inch of this show. His fingerprints are all over it. But I think the episodes will be somewhere between 40 and 60 minutes, something like that. It’s really about exploring L.A. in a week when the funniest people are here. He truly has amassed a treasure trove of the biggest comedy stars in the world. There’s sketches, there’s really fun in-studio moments, but I am going to leave it to John to define his show a little bit more.

I enjoyed the trailer John made for the special, though I’m still not sure I’m sold on his shaggy long-hair look.
I disagree! I mean, as somebody who is starting to get bald, I actually have hair envy. I don’t agree with your notes.

Whatever makes him happy is fine. So in addition to the three live events, you’ve said you will also be recording a few other events for later streaming, most notably the Ali Wong special. But that’s still just a fraction of the hundreds of events you’re doing. Is there more you haven’t announced? 
I think we’ve pretty much announced at this point everything that we’re taping. We’re taping Ali Wong. We’re taping Deon Cole. We’re taping another program of up-and-coming comedians that we’ll be putting on the Netflix Is A Joke YouTube. But I think it’s pretty similar to last time. I mean fundamentally this is about celebrating comedy. That is our north star here.

I get that there’s a price involved when you decide to put an event from the festival on the platform — both the production costs and then the licensing fees you have to pay the artists. But it still seems like there’s a lot of great stuff taking place which would find a big audience on Netflix, like David Letterman’s interview series. Have you considered a middle ground like we’ve seen with some music festivals on YouTube and Hulu, where events are streamed live but don’t live forever on the service?  
Obviously our priority outside of the festival is always to bring the best shows, the best comedians, the best movies to our members, and whenever there’s an opportunity to do that, of course we will. But I think the differentiator between this and the Coachellas and other music festivals is, stand-up comedians can’t burn their material. They truly need to film and launch their specials at a time when they are done touring that material. If I watched No Doubt at Coachella, I could go see them in concert two weeks later and that would be fine. It doesn’t work for comedy in the same way because you would know all the material. Our goal here is to put the art of stand up on a pedestal and have our artists put their stuff out to the world when it makes sense for them.

What about making money from the festival – is that also a goal at this point? Do you need to put butts in seats and sell out as many events as possible?  
Well, we certainly want butts in seats because we want our comedians performing in front of great crowds of their fans — and that’s happening. But yeah, that’s not our goal. We’re highlighting the fact that Netflix is a great place for comedy.

So the expectation is not that this turns into another profit center for Netflix, the way the company is doing with its in-person experiences for shows such as Bridgerton and Stranger Things?
That’s not our goal right now.

Speaking of money, the famed Just for Laughs comedy festival canceled its event this year and filed for bankruptcy. You’re an alum of JFL, so I have to ask whether you think the success of Netflix is a Joke might have had a negative impact on it, or if it raises the pressure on you to fill the gap left by its departure.  
First of all, I think Just For Laughs will be back. It’s such an important festival and so unbelievably important for emerging comedians. But no, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t really correlate what we’re doing here versus what has happened there. I think that events like this are very important. There was just a great festival in Austin last week and there’s the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and some other very important festivals around the world, and we just hope that they all stay healthy. And quite frankly, I think we’re kind of blown away that this thing has grown so quickly in such a short period of time. We’re going to have over 500 shows. We’re at the Hollywood Bowl, in the Forum, and Crypto Arena. We’re doing a [5,000 person event] at the Rose Bowl, and we’re at the Troubadour and the Comedy Store. We take the responsibility of having this footprint seriously, but we’re seeing festivals flourish all around the world.

Netflix’s stand-up business has also grown very quickly over the last decade. Early on, the company was a disruptor that made waves by offering huge paychecks to top comics in exchange for having ownership of the shows for your library. More recently, it feels like there are less headlines about huge checks and more buzz that you’re quietly licensing shows for shorter windows. So I’m wondering how the business model and the market for stand-up has changed since you guys got into the business. 
I don’t think it has evolved that much to be honest with you. You’re correct: We have licensed some things. But generally it’s pretty similar to when I started. When we started doing these things 10 years ago, it was a moment where stand-up was really valued at Netflix, but the marketplace outside of here was really quiet. And as we go into 2024, I think we’re seeing so many signals from the marketplace that there’s a lot more interest in stand-up comedy. And I’m not just talking about the other networks. I’m talking about comedians flourishing on TikTok or YouTube or in some cases their own podcast. So there’s an ecosystem for stand-up comedy that didn’t exist 10 years ago and it’s a much bigger business now than it’s ever been.

I’ve said this before, but 20 years ago when I started my career, there was maybe one act that could do an arena every two years. It was like an Andrew Dice Clay or maybe a Blue Collar or Kings of Comedy tour. And if you look at this festival, I think there are 15 shows at that level in just 12 days. The comedy world is completely different now, and that’s a good thing. It’s a signal that we made the right bet when we started to invest heavily in the space.

I know you said you’ve always done some licensing, but is there more of it going on now? Is the model changing?
There’s been a little more of that. I think there’s been some awareness that some artists like shooting their specials and owning it. So there has been an emerging licensing deal template that we do now that we weren’t doing a few years ago. But in terms of our volume, it’s been fairly steady. Obviously this year because of the festival, we’re doing a ton of stand-up. But I don’t think that there is a big shift. I think maybe there’s an awareness that there are different deals to be done to appeal to different artists. And our goal is to just figure out how we get the best things on Netflix and not have an entrenched view on how every deal needs to get done. We just want the best comedians to be available for our members in a pretty competitive landscape.

Would you say you’re writing fewer seven- and eight-figure checks than you did a few years ago?  
No. I think it goes up and down, but I wouldn’t say that. I think it’s pretty similar. In terms of the output, it’s similar. I think what you’re referring to is, there was a moment where we did a lot of deals at that level. But those comedians came out over a three- or four-year span. It’s not like they came out all at the same time. The reality is we’re still doing a lot of large deals for comedians, and the reason why is because those comedians are attracting big audiences and it’s quite frankly a joy to see that we’re at a point where so many comedians can command what they’re commanding because their audiences make the economics of that make sense.

And some of those big numbers seem to come out of nowhere. Were you surprised by how well Matt Rife’s special did last year? 
I can’t speak to the specifics of each individual deal in that way. But if you look at the profile of Matt Rife – there are very few comedians that are young. He has come into this marketplace and is speaking to an audience that most other comedians aren’t speaking to. Well, Matt Rife is speaking to a lot of people who are younger. He’s just sold out this massive tour. He’s going to be the youngest comedian ever to sell out the Hollywood Bowl; I think he’s maybe the youngest to even play the Bowl. So it’s very cool to watch the next generation of comedians kind of pop up right in front of our eyes.

Two other examples: Andrew Schulz and Shane Gillis. We did a special with Shane last year, took a flier on it — and he’s going to sell out the Crypto Arena, the Forum, and the Greek. And again, he appeals to different tastes and different audiences. That’s really what it’s about for us. And that’s why I think Matt has found his — I don’t know if I should say niche, because it’s such a big fan base, but the folks that he speaks to, some of the other comedians we have on Netflix may not.

How are you looking to spotlight and build up those newer acts? Is the festival designed to do that?  
We’ve had a steady stream of multi-comic specials. I’m in my office right now, and I’m looking at the first multi-comic special that we did in 2017, which is called The Standups. There were six comedians, but the first person was Nate Bargatze. Nate Bargatze just filmed a comedy special in an 18,000 theater in the round and sold out two nights of it, and we were filming that. And the same night, we were filming a Fortune Feimster special, and she was one of the six people on The Standups. The next person was Deon Cole, and we’re shooting a special with him during the festival. Then we had Nikki Glaser on that show, who — spoiler alert — is going to be doing our roast of Tom Brady, as well as Beth Stelling, who we just launched a special with about six months ago.

So we’ve been using these multi-comic shows as a way of elevating voices. We’re also now doing it sometimes with these licensed deals. We see somebody film something and we just look at it and say, “Hey, we have a real opportunity for this person to explode on Netflix with us.” But all these multi-comic shows that we’ve done, if you look at the lineups, you see talent that has then stayed with us. A few years ago we did a show called The Comedy Lineup. One of the stars of that show was Michelle Buteau, who we now have a series with. Another star was Taylor Tomlinson, who’s now one of our biggest acts. So I think we’ve been doing that fairly consistently.

You have so many different kinds of comedians on Netflix, but some of them have generated blowback from audiences because of the content of their work. Dave Chappelle is the most notable example, of course. The company’s top leadership has made it clear in the last couple of years that it’s not going to pull shows which generate a lot of negative response. And you talked about this with Vulture two years ago. I’m curious how you see things today, headed into a series of live events where the risks of a backlash to a joke are not insignificant. 
I respect the fact that certainly some folks won’t respond to certain things. But at the end of the day, we want to give people options. And part of that is, some people’s favorite thing to do on a Saturday night may be to watch a Dave Chapelle special. For some people, it may be Taylor Tomlinson or Mae Martin or Sarah Silverman or John Mulaney or Chris Rock. And we don’t want to block those choices for our members. We want to give them the option. Our members have the ability of clicking on something; they have the ability to shut off something. You could buy a ticket, or you don’t need to buy a ticket. If we’re doing our jobs well — especially in an art form that’s often on the bleeding edge of big discussions of things that are going on in culture — I think it is very important that we give our members that choice. But we certainly understand if then not everything is for everybody.

Tell me more about what you know about Netflix’s stand-up audience today versus five years ago. You have a lot more data than you used to. Has anything changed about who watches what in the stand-up space? Have tastes evolved over the last few years?  
Something that we’re seeing more and more is the cultivation of fandoms by individual artists. That happens sometimes outside of Netflix. Your neighbor may not know who this person is, but they’re selling out the arena in your town that night. The shift is less about the art of stand-up per se, but more about how individual comedians have so many roots to speak to their audience and cultivate it and grow it. I think that’s what I’ve been seeing. In terms of the art of standup, it’s pretty similar to what it’s always been. And I would say there’s more standups. So in that way it’s not similar. If you go to any comedy club or any open mic in this country, you’re on a waiting list to get on that stage. So there’s certainly more of that.

But I think the big change — and we’re part of this flywheel — is how people speak directly to audiences. Oftentimes now they’re coming to Netflix with diehard fans that are so excited that they get to watch their favorite person on Netflix, which [otherwise] could be a very expensive night out between tickets and babysitters and parking and all that stuff. We think it’s a pretty good proposition that you get to see that person on Netflix. So I think the fandom of it is what has changed fundamentally in the last 10 years.

So are we in a new kind of golden age for stand-up, similar to the late ‘70s and early 1980s? Do you see stand-up at Netflix as connected to other areas of programming on the platform? Is part of your mission to find talent that could do other projects for other divisions?
Yeah. I think what we really are excited about is the flywheel of talent: You start working with Michelle Buteau and then she has her series, or Ali Wong goes from her special to her movie to obviously Beef and then wins every award. We’re really interested in taking the talent that we work with and for folks to see them across Netflix. And we’re doing more and more of that.
But it’s very, very collaborative. Remember, comedians often used to do stand-up as a way to get [cast in TV] shows. That dynamic has changed now that stand-up comedians are so successful on the road. So we’re trying to really listen to our comedians on what other projects that they want to do and trying our best to be a home for them.

Yeah. I think what we really are excited about is the flywheel of talent: You start working with Michelle Buteau and then she has her series, or Ali Wong goes from her special to her movie to obviously Beef and then wins every award. We’re really interested in taking the talent that we work with and for folks to see them across Netflix. And we’re doing more and more of that.
But it’s very, very collaborative. Remember, comedians often used to do stand-up as a way to get [cast in TV] shows. That dynamic has changed now that stand-up comedians are so successful on the road. So we’re trying to really listen to our comedians on what other projects that they want to do and trying our best to be a home for them.

One area where you could seemingly develop new talent is through a sketch comedy show, sort of like the one Mr. Mulaney is doing next week. It wouldn’t necessarily have to be live from New York, but you get what I’m saying here — SNL. Is that sort of show something you think could be doable on Netflix? 
You’re talking about one of the most iconic shows of all time. I think anyone would love to be doing something like that. We have no immediate plans, but I think we’d obviously be open to a show like that, especially now that we’re doing more and more in the live space.