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Creative Process
Why we decided it was time to turn our hit comedy YouTube channel into a hit comedy podcast
Why we decided it was time to turn our hit comedy YouTube channel into a hit comedy podcast
2022.07.27
Together with their high school friend, Sheldon Sabastian, Brampton-born Brothers Jermaine and Trevaunn Richards have developed Random Order Podcast, with more than 100 episodes under their belts. The show covers everything from Drake owing them a tomahawk steak to AI haircuts. In their own words, it’s “the number one show about anything”. The show is one of many in Acast’s Comedy category, which has seen 24% listener growth year over year.
This is a guest article by Jermaine Richards, Trevaunn Richards, and Sheldon Sabastian from Random Order Podcast.
We've worked in the comedy space for at least a decade now and learned the best content to make is the content we’d love to watch. When you create for yourself you create with integrity and ultimately release what represents you. Those who align with the content align with you, creating a much stronger bond with your audience, no matter what content you create.
We first found success with producing original comedy skits on YouTube; it was our main “thing” for 10 years and it helped us get better with writing jokes. But as the content landscape changed, we found sketches to be way too much to produce at the level of quality we’re looking for; each sketch is an entirely new production with multiple scenes, characters, set-ups and hours of editing that result in a three-minute video that YouTube rewards much less than 60-minute videos.
Naturally, we had an interest in creating long-form content. In 2015 we ran a YouTube talk-show we called “GroupChat”. Essentially it was a podcast before we knew anything about podcasts. With no experience running a show, we stuck with what was working — which was episodes with one debate topic, usually around the subject of dating. It was a fun era that we also learned a lot from; among other things, effortless conversations don’t stick to one topic.
2019 comes around and we're learning more about the business of podcasting. We saw a lot of our comedy icons moving into the space and we started to realize the value of the format. It’s been the most efficient way for us to produce content for all major platforms.
We didn’t exactly know what our podcast would be, but we knew it couldn’t be centered around one theme or topic; the format had to be free-flowing and come from our life experiences. We also knew we absolutely needed a sound board and another co-host.
We brought on our friend Sheldon Sabastian, who we felt would bring a voice of reason to our comedic outlook we had on certain things. He’s also an incredibly talented writer/rapper, and is deep into anime, sports, games, and a whole bunch of other dope things that would bring a unique perspective to the table. Beyond all that, he’s a great friend who saw the vision early on and was down for the long game. So far it’s been sweet!
Podcasting inspired us to create an audio/visual experience that feels like a hybrid of all the content we’ve practiced writing, directing, shooting, editing over the past 10 years. It’s also challenged us to think about audio-only content which resulted in us experimenting with music, sound effects, spacial audio, echoes and I’m sure many other things as we continue to create.
Podcasting just works for comedy; it’s unlocked a new aspect to our business and ushered in a whole new audio-only audience who relate to us then discover everything else we’ve been up to. We’re blessed to be able to stay true to ourselves and grow with an audience who’s been along for the ride for years. Come hang out!
Listen to Random Order here.