Reviews, Views and Adventures in Content Creation

Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Vlogger Interviews: Ryan Abe [ForSkitsAndGiggles]



More about Ryan Abe:

There was a time, not so long ago, when a young entertainer's heart would skip a beat when offered the chance to make the big jump to television - Ryan Abe got an email recently just like that - an agent, perhaps, who asked, "how would you like your own tv show?"

"I guess he expected me to be wowed by it," he says.


He wasn't.


At 21 years old, Ryan is already a successful YouTuber.  His channel, ForSkitsAndGiggles, has a subscriber base over 242,000, and  his YouTube Partner revenues have made creating online video a full time job.  More importantly, Ryan doesn't think of YouTube as simply a stop along the way.  It's the place to be.


"A lot of YouTubers have turned down TV shows left and right, because they already have an audience.  Why would they send their audience to a show that could be canceled within a week?"


The entertainment industry is slowly awakening to the power of the YouTube community.  In his March 15, 2012 Daily Variety "Tech Bytes" column, David Cohen wrote, "The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that YouTube is getting ready to burn down the filmed entertainment business as we know it.  In fact, the match has already been struck.  We just haven't felt the heat yet."  He suggests that the change will be profound; as 78 rpm records popularized the era of the three minute pop song, the three minute YouTube video may very well become dominant form of video entertainment.


Ryan spoke recently with a veteran newscaster, who recalled his experience in the early days of television, and advised him to "just keep doing this, because everyone told me I was an idiot to want to work on television," back when radio was still King.   


"It took my dad a long time for him to even accept what I do and he was, I guess, concerned:  'what is my son doing, he's going outside, dressed as a squirrel?  What is he doing?'   And I always said, 'I think that this might do something, I have an idea it could go in a good direction' "  Today, Ryan's dad is convinced that his son was right.


"It's  a really nice thing to think about, to be part of something that is technically changing the whole game, entertainment wise - and they're scared," he says of the traditional media industry, "they're really scared.  And I think that's a good thing for us."


To use an expression dating back to the early days of radio:  stay tuned!


As Al Jolson said in the first "talkie" motion picture in 1927, "You ain't seen nothing yet!"

2 comments:

  1. It's great that there's still some people able to make a living off of their YT partnership revenue, and that new partners are joining them. It is a new medium, that's only begun to emerge from its cocoon. Nobody knows what it will look like once it spreads its wings.

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  2. I'm also quite impressed at the fact that so many have a good head on their shoulders - Ryan's got a great attitude.

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