Podcasting is just one of the many ways by which comedians can develop a fan base, but over the last couple years, it’s also become one of the most lucrative. According to Adam Sachs, the CEO of Midroll — the company sells ads for popular podcasts such as “WTF With Marc Maron,” Scott Aukerman’s “Comedy Bang! Bang!,” Pete Holmes’s “You Made It Weird,” and Paul Scheer’s “How Did This Get Made” — “many comedians could survive today with the revenue from their podcasts alone.” Sachs says a podcast with 40,000 downloads per episode can gross well over $75,000 a year, and shows in the 100,000-download range can gross somewhere between $250,000 and $400,000.
He estimates that three or four Midroll podcasts will make over $1 million this year. This has been a boon to comedians like Maron, Aukerman, Chris Hardwick, and Bill Burr, comedy veterans who had to wait for the boom to truly break through — all of whom have recently parlayed successful podcasts into cable-TV shows and larger fees for stand-up appearances. (…)
“Comedy is to this generation what music was to previous generations,” Cook says.
Comedy nerds are as interested in the source code as they are the jokes themselves. In 2015, the source code is the jokes.
