Weary Ridiculousness writers include “please make other shows” in their list of union demands
The writers of MTV's most-shown show are also calling for better pay and residuals for the more than 200 episodes they produce a year
Aux News Ridiculousness
It’s hard to imagine that there’s a show on cable TV more profitable—in a strict “how much we pay for it” vs. “how much we get for it” sense—than MTV’s Ridiculousness. As people have noted more than once over the last several years, that’s why the reality series has so aggressively colonized the MTV schedule in the modern era, subsuming all in its path, until the network literally runs more hours of programming that are Ridiculousness than aren’t: It pulls ratings, and it’s cheap as hell to make.
That cheapness is, obviously, a big part of why the show’s writers—who are billed as “consulting producers,” and whose duties include “consulting” a bunch of things for series star Rob Drydek to do and say on every one of the literally hundreds of episodes the show produces every single year—have been pushing to unionize over the last few months. “We produce the most profitable show currently on TV,” writer Ally Maynard told Deadline this week, shortly after news broke that the show’s writers had submitted their ballots for unionization to the National Labor Relations Board “And yet we are paid 60% less than WGA writers that work for America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Maynard added that, “‘Unscripted’ television is very much scripted ,and our writing staff is fed up with being abused and underpaid by Paramount, MTV and Rob Dyrdek.”
In a very odd note, the writers’ lists of demands, acquired by Deadline, don’t just include the usual calls for more equitable profit sharing and less harsh conditions: They also apparently include a request “for MTV to order more shows,” because it is presumably very exhausting to carry the entire creative output of an entire TV network on your backs. It’s not every day you see TV writers asking for shows that aren’t theirs to be made—but it’s not also every day that a network gives over almost its entire television output to a single series. (Unless you’re watching MTV, in which case it is every day; which is exactly the point.)
84 Comments
Is Dyrdek being a Dyrdick?Does MTV lack M-pa-thy? Will the writers demands Par-amount to anything?Ridiculousness re-done-culousness?
Dad, I told you to stop getting in the comment threads!
You’re clearly cut out to write for Ridiculousness
SCAB!
That’s like three episodes right there!
Have never heard of it. Is it like America’s Funniest Home Videos? The home made slapstick and objects thrown at crotches couldn’t keep my attention long.
Do yourself a favor sometime and look up any random block of MTV’s programming. I’ve never seen the show before but it’s hilariously pretty much ALL that MTV airs.
I just watched a trailer and it’s worse than I thought. Much better footage but just stupid people nearly killing themselves and guys getting punched in the crotch. This is garbage.
From what I can garner it seems like a mixture of Tosh.0 and those looped videos from “The Chive” that play endlessly on TVs at various Miller’s Ale House locations. And it’s like 95% of MTV’s programming block.
yeah it’s more or less a cross between Tosh.o and AFV, with added guests. It’s about the simplest show you can possibly imagine, and yes there are more hours of that show run in a week that ANY other show on TV anywhere, and it’s not even close. It is funny enough what I typically throw on the TV when I go to bed since it runs from like 9pm all the way well after I wake up for work.
Oh, okay. Now I know why it sounded familiar.
It’s “several people add commentary to viral videos we’ve already seen” format.
It’s Tosh.0 but with a guy who can barely string a sentence together.
I’ve only watched it a few times years ago, but does anybody watch it for anything other than the videos?
I’d be more likely to watch if they got just rid of the “writing”.It’s like awards shows. The “writing” is the dreck you have to sit through while they set up for the next presentation or song. The stuff you actually tuned in to see.
There’s at least a couple of channels like that (Fail Army, something related to AFV) on Roku or Hulu or whatever service the TV in my store’s breakroom gets.They are painfully unfunny.I doubt the writing for shows like AFV and Ridiculousness is all that important, but the curation certainly is.
Some of those other shows are even worse than Ridiculousness. With Ridiculousness they banter before the clips and then pretty much keep their mouths shut so we can laugh at the “ow, my balls” moments (unless they need to interject and point out something silly), but with those other shows they have running corny commentary through the videos.
“but the curation certainly is.”
How much curation is happening when they’ve produced 183 new episodes THIS YEAR (as of July 24th)?
I have a friend who used to work on Tosh.0. He hated it so much, but like with Ridiculousness Comedy Central just kept going because it cost basically nothing to make. Thankfully he’s moved on to more fulfilling work.
That one girl’s laugh. eek What’s her name? Tara San Francisco or something? Her last name is a city, isn’t it?
It’s something West Coast, IIRC.I remember cause I think I just read about her doing something stupid.
Oops, close! lol They did do a funny spoof of Ridiculousness on SNL when the girl from Wednesday was hosting.(I have clearly turned into my parents who can never remember the names of famous people.)
I believe the name you’re looking for is Jenna Ortega. She also used to work seemingly exclusively for the Disney Channel(Stuck in the middle, Elena Of Avalor(voice)).
Aw fun, my kids used to watch Elena of Avalor sometimes. Elena got on my damn nerves. lol Nothing wrong with the voice, just the character.
It’s always good to have those reminders that even the crappiest reality shows have SOME sort of writer’s staff coming up with whatever winds up on screen – if not directly from someone’s mouth, it’s still in the form of the ideas etc. (or in this case lame jokes based on lowest-hanging internet fruit iirc) that they make money from.I’m all for them getting residuals. Given how much they air, I’m pretty sure each writer could buy a house based on any given week.
Yeah, at uni we were told Big Brother Australia was always looking for writers – one of the biggest employers of TV writers in Aus at the time, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise…yeah. It’s not traditional scripting (hence reality TV’s alternative title, “unscripted television”), but more like “Jessica and Sarah are both equality hot. They should hate each other and fight over Tyler. We should then have Tyler get interested in Kate.”The obvious ones are the fake fights on the restoration shows. For male oriented-shows, it’s an arsehole boss (because everyone can relate to that, right? Right?) You know, the dick who drags in a completely rusted-out Camaro and tells his 25-to-40-year-old (same demo as the audience!) to git ‘er done in five days, which is generous, because back in his day the boss did the same job in only three! And that car won the damn Outer Cleveland Muscle Car Concourse in ‘89!For female-oriented shows, you’ll have one broadly-attractive (but not too attractive) housewife type who gets to be the brains for, and push around, a bunch of physically strong and capable, but non-threatening, idiot male tradies who tell her what she wants is impossible (tear out the wall and put in a new kitchen in two days?!) so that when it finally gets done, she can claim all the credit because it was her idea and the guys who did the work (on camera, at least) said it was impossible. ‘Course, none of this shit is real, the car and kitchen were finished over a period of weeks, and there was three dozen other helpers off-camera.
Funniest thing I’ve heard about the renovation shows is the end result is like TV sets – they film what they complete, put fascia on the rest (or just skip unfinished rooms altogether) so it just looks like the redid an entire house in an afternoon.
The houses always end up looking jank as fuck, like everything they did is just…sitting on the surface. (My mum loves these shows, and there’s a whole fuckin’ free-to-air channel dedicated to Chip and what’s-her-face, which has done fuckin’ wonders for our housing availability, because every cunt’s now a property magnate.) Look, you’re American, aren’t you? What in the everloving fuck is with Americans putting giant fucking oak beams in every fucking house? California bungalow? Giant oak beam. Craftsman? Giant fuckin’ oak beam. Mid-century modern pied-a-terre, designed by noted architect Helmut Scheisskopf of the Europe-cum-Cleveland Scheisskopf School? Giant fuckin’ 8×8″ oak beam. Shit-boring suburban clapboard 3-bed, 2.5 bathroom, tasteless snout house? Giant fuckin’ 8×8″, 600lb, gone-black-from-two-centuries-of-ammonia-wafting-up-from-the-cow-piss-that-flowed-through-the-Iowa-barn-from-which-it-was-reclaimed oak beam nailed to mass-produced plaster over fast-grown shitty plantation pine non-load-bearing walls.
Because nothing screams “historical property!” like a huge random oak beam. But yeah, the Gaines have destroyed property affordability in Waco.
Maybe MTV could do something outrageous and outside-the-box programming involving music?!? Just an idea…I’m not sure where I got it from.
Whoa, you think the “M” in “MTV” might actually stand for something?
It stands or “More Ridiculousness Episodes”
It stands for ‘Money’, duh
It doesn’t stand for Meh?
Every time they try that it fails.
They’ve done multiple spin-off networks of MTV and VH1 and they all pivot from music videos to shows about music to shows that aren’t about music until the music’s all gone.
Ooh I can help. You got it from a tired, weary old joke about how MTV doesn’t play music videos anymore that has now been around longer than the actual time that MTV played music videos.
Oh, I’m well aware:
I was thinking much the same, maybe they could put on some goddamn music videos for a change?
What with how hard it is to find music videos anywhere these days.
Right, like wouldn’t airing music videos be nearly as free? It seems like the whole music video industry is just publicity for the artist.
Nearly as free, but not nearly as well-viewed, I imagine. The problem with music videos is that they’re (comparatively) long, and the minute a song comes on people don’t like, they’ll change the channel. Ridiculousness video runtimes are measured in seconds. It’s almost the textbook definition of second screen content- right down to the fact that people can and do leave it on for hours at a time.
True, back in the olden days when the music channels ran videos a lot, I’d just switch back and forth among VH1, MTV, and CMT much like radio stations.
They have to pay to air music videos. They can’t just throw them up. The record industry used to let them do it for free but they don’t need MTV like they did in the 80s and 90s.
In that case non-stop Ridiculousness does seem cheaper.
I feel like they could do some cool documentaries about bands or iconic songs or something.
I recently realized the most Gen X “joke” in the world is complaining that cable channels don’t show what their name says anymore.
Wait, it’s an active program? I assumed they were just re-running the same block of episodes over and over. I’m actually stunned that any active development efforts are happening on either MTV or Nickelodeon, and it’s not just a dusty PC in a locked room endlessly swapping through Ridiculousness and Spongebob reruns.
Today on “surprisingly not an Onion headline”
That is literally the first thought that popped into my mind when I read the title. Man, the Onion is still killing it with the sharp satire.
I think Ridiculousness taps into the same thing many podcasts do — it feels like a group of friends hanging out. In this case, they’re watching YouTube together—so it’s Beavis and Butthead but with more people. I like B&B; not so much Ridiculousness. But they pull off a weird dynamic—clearly they’re not saying anything smart and they honestly come off as people you’d never expect to do well, but they’re all making lots of money. So it’s a perfect show for people who fantasize about being paid to stay home and watch TV all day. So Drydek really pulled something off here. Fantasy Factory and Rob & Big had people actually doing things. Now they get to do next to nothing and they’re probably making more money than ever.
TIL there’s a tv show called Ridiculousness, which is… about… something? This article doesn’t exactly make it clear.
It’s Tosh.O but worse
I have to admit that Tosh.0 is a guilty pleasure
I didn’t expect a Dead Kennedys reference while looking at AVClub today, but that was a nice little surprise at the beginning of a long weekend.
I have been listening to SXM’s Marky Ramones Punk Rock Revolution channel. All the old classic punk from the 70’s and 80’s.
Man I’m having an out of touch old man moment. I have literally never heard of this show and it sounds like it’s half of MTVs programming hours.No, it’s the children who are wrong.
I must be one of those out-0f-touch coastal elites, because I have literally never heard of this show.
I live in TX. Finally something to unite our country!
I always got the sense that Ridiculousness was background noise for the most part. Like, no one (well, maybe a few people, but virtually no one) tunes in for the latest episode of the show. Instead it’s on in the background while doing dishes, or people stay with it for a bit while flipping through channels and texting on the phone. That said, I don’t doubt that the gross margin percentage of this show is sky-fucking-high, so it’s a viable option for a brand that is out of ideas and cultural cachet. At this point it is just like it’s other Viacom brethren as another vehicle for airing mothership content.
Honest question. Who’s watching MTV?
The number of unions that are forming or being joined as a result of this hairbrained (from the top down) strike is truly hilarious. The producers have really exposed themselves as idiots..
2024 is going to be an absolute TV and movie wasteland.
Wait, that show actually has writers? Like, an actual writer’s room?
This is a thing that I fucking WISH more dumbshits who knock the writers strike would get through their stupid fucking skulls. (I’m clearly very passionate about this. Apologies for the gratuitous cursing.) WRITERS LIKE TO WRITE. They LIKE the job. They LIKE the craft. I have no doubt that these particular writers are just exhausted of having to feed the idiot who hosts this dreck a bunch of material. Any time someone claims that industry writers are relieved by the strike because it means they don’t have to work or claim that they should welcome AI so their work is easier I just want to Tyrion/Joffrey slap the ever-loving shit out of them.Writers like to write. And the VAST majority of them like the industry. They want it to be healthy. They like movies, they like TV. It’s fucking FUN to do that job. When the job isn’t running you into the ground for pennies.
MTV should bring back The State.
Never heard of this show, which tells you how often I feel the need to check-out what’s happening on MTV.
You telling me a network that has teenaged girls getting pregnant for a shot to be on one of its shows isn’t your thing?
I get this is super-cheap to make, but how to do they sell this to advertisers? Your ad will just run within this 20 hour block of Ridiculousness? Are there actually enough people watching it to offset the low production cost? Or do they just throw the ad time on Ridiculousness in for free and the shows on the app or streaming are what is actually making money? If you look on MTV.com, they have shows-Jersey Shore, Teen Mom, currently in production, but they just never air them on the actual cable channel? I don’t understand how that makes sense.
When I’m on the work treadmill, I’ll always stop on the cable feed and have a few laughs at the ridiculousness of this show.
Next up 5 more hours of ow my balls! Brought to you by Brondo! It’s what plants crave!
Brondo the thirst annihilater!
It almost sounds like an Onion story. The picture of stupid Rob Drydek is very Onion.
Serious question: is there a half hour of TV on at any point in the week where somebody just plays music videos? On MTV or otherwise? I know that there are some music stations on deep cable for some services that run music videos I think, but you would think that “5 music videos I love” picked by a different person or celebrity each episode would be a pretty easy concept to sell.
MTV runs an hour of videos on Friday afternoons, Fresh Out Playlist, apparently because their contracts with cable companies require them to run a minimum amount of music content.
interesting, thanks! given the name…probably not vintage 😀
Revolt.
Check out MTV Live. They run music programming non-stop including music videos and shows like Austin City Limits.
You know what I miss? Fantasy Factory. That was fun. Though that was back when Rob was cool.
That thing has writers??