The weirder thing? It seems to be working.
A scabrous and successful champion of the everyman, Louis C. K. decided last week to go direct with his fans: no cable special, no middleman, just a simple download for $5 on his Web site to see his comedy show “Louis C. K.: Live at the Beacon Theater.”
The show could be viewed as the consumer wished, with no rights protection or expensive subscription. A buy-it-and-watch-it proposition, no cable company involved. He was also, of course, enabling people to watch it free — without digital rights management, it was there for the pirating — and some went right to the torrent sites and did so.
But many, many other people paid the fiver and got a package of two streams and three downloads, which could be burned to a DVD or streamed on a smartphone and wherever else they felt like watching it.
Louis C. K. is a freak about doing it himself. He writes, directs, produces and acts in his own series, “Louie,” then edits it himself with Final Cut Pro on his Mac. And now the king of D.I.Y. has one more credential: distributor.
“I went at this like a consumer, just looking at human impulses,” he told me.
“I buy lots of things online and I had a focus group of one. I thought about it, and five bucks seemed almost free and I figured if I took out the hassle, most of the speed bumps, it would almost be like hitting a link and streaming it. It’s been pretty damn great so far.”
While I was talking with him on the phone Thursday night, he checked his Web site and about 175,000 people had bought his special through PayPal. He expected 200,000 total downloads by the weekend, which meant he would have grossed $1 million. After covering costs of about $250,000 for the live production and the Web site, that’s a $750,000 profit. And he owns the rights, and the long tail of buyers, in perpetuity. The transparency of the enterprise, including its cost in relation to how many people bought in, was the subject of media coverage all last week.
“It feels weird having numbers out there, because that’s my personal income,” he said. “But I talked to my mom, who is a pretty judicious, careful person, and she said, ‘Tell them everything. Just let it all get out there.’ So that’s what I have been doing, at least so far.”
Louis C. K. has been doing comedy since 1984, when he took a break from working on cars to try stand-up. He didn’t go to college, is not deep into technology, and doesn’t think of himself as any sort of pioneer. But he has a fundamental understanding of the Web and what it could mean for content providers and consumers.
“O.K., so NBC is this huge company and they have all these studios and these satellites to beam stuff out,” he said, “but on the Web, both NBC.com and LouisCK.com have the same amount of bandwidth. We are equals and there are things you can do with that. This has been a fun little experiment.”
It may be little, but it has significant implications, pointing a way forward for performers and the consumers who want to pay for their work.
Television faces threats from many sides, including from people who are cutting their cable cord and watching programming over the Web, as well as any number of Web-based programmers like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon. But network and cable television’s big hedge against insurgent technologies has always been its stranglehold on programming and talent. If I wanted to see how “Homeland” ended and was not willing to steal it, I’m would have had to pay Verizon Fios for my cable feed, which in turn pays Showtime.
In fact, I wouldn’t know anything about Louis C. K. if it weren’t for cable. I DVR’d his freakishly hilarious series “Louie” on FX, which is owned by News Corporation, and I saw his last two comedy specials on cable. The people who helped build the brand of Louis C. K. might wonder about his decision to go native (digitally), but hey, it’s the Internet: it’s every man, woman, producer, consumer, company and cable outfit for itself!
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
Twitter.com/carr2n
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