During 2015’s Great Pivot to Video, Sean Evans and the team at First We Feast, then a blog, knew they had to find their new content niche. In part through an accident of real estate, they wanted to try a celebrity interview show — but not a standard one.
Then, Evans remembers, they had to consider, “How do we disrupt that PR-driven flight pattern — and can we do that with food?”
During a Main Stage conversation with NAB vice president of content design and development Josh Miely at the 2024 NAB Show, Hot Ones host Sean Evans shared insights into creating and leveraging valuable IP, dished on his Midwestern hot takes, and, of course, ate some chicken wings.
On Creating and Monetizing IP
“If you have an idea, that’s great. It doesn’t necessarily mean that plane is ever going to take off.”
“Just go out there, do it, make mistakes, learn from them. And then over years and years and years, you can tune into this thing that becomes like IP, you know, but yeah, it has to start with the audience. And I’ll tell you, like, the audience doesn’t care at all about the phrase intellectual property; they just want to be entertained.”
“Thinking about it as a brand, and the products, those were all trying to keep up with the tidal wave that the show created.”
“The first spin-off that we did was Truth Or Dab, and that came about in an interesting way. Actually, we shot an episode with Kevin Hart, which is another one of those tentpole episodes for us, probably the next one after Key and Peele, and he was doing a movie.”
“There were a lot of pitches coming in, interesting people that we knew that we could do interesting things with, but couldn’t necessarily fit into a proper Hot Ones season. So then you start expanding the scope of what you do.”
“IP is one of those things. Executives are risk averse, which is why there’s like 1,000 Marvel movies or a bajillion spin offs of Yellowstone or whatever, you know. And to have that kind of IP that’s completely owned with all the legal backing and all that stuff, that’s not really so obtainable.”
“The market could probably do more Hot Ones episodes, but I’m just a one man with one stomach.”
On the Value of Fan Culture
“The audience took these clips and these moments, and they’re the ones that gave it the fuel to become… the shooting stars in the constellation of pop culture.”
“The social media side, the audience actually fed us, which is unique. But that was my experience.”
“From YouTube to the audience, I think it’s the most honest transaction between media and audiences.”
On Being a Good Interviewer
“Interviewing is a difficult thing to do. No one’s natural at it, it takes a lot of time and a lot of practice, in order to get any sense of who you are from that perspective. And I don’t think I’m done, or I don’t think I’ve hit my stride yet.”
“There was like a naivete that actually kind of helped you as an interviewer, I wish I could have him back for an interview every once in a while.”
“Mak[e] each episode an extension of the guests personality. So the more you can vary the personalities, the more different perspectives you can have in there, the better because then it’ll be a unique watch experience every time.”
On Broadcast’s Influence
“I grew up as kind of a latchkey kid who was raised on TV and the kind of escapism that it gave me. I understood the importance that it had in my life.”
“I think it made me a precocious child, you know, watching the late night shows as a kid.”
“I drew a ton of inspiration from the radio side of things. And honestly, that’s as big as I dreamed, like when I was going off to abroad to Illinois to be a broadcast journalism student, I was like, when I graduate, maybe I’ll be a producer on morning commute, talk, call-in sports radio show, on the 670 The Score on ESPN 1000.”
“It was informed and shaped and inspired by the love that I had of talk radio growing up, and of course, late-night.”
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