A few years back, I did a panel at Blackpool Magic Convention on TV Magic. A question that was asked repeatedly was…
How do I get on TV?
All of us did our best to answer the question, but I’m not sure our answers were the ones people wanted to hear. A few months ago, my friend Richard Young wrote about how the most famous magicians landed their first TV gig. I asked him to write this to help illustrate how there is no set route to get your own TV show as a magician. Not only that, the best way to go about it changes every few years.
Before the pandemic, I pitched a magic show and was told quite definitely that no channel wants a magic show this quarter. Magic shows have become expensive and disposable. A lot of money is spent on an episode of television viewers are unlikely to revisit. The commissioner told me solo magic shows had been blacklisted much like how Sketch Comedy had been. Several years ago in the U.K., it felt like every channel had its own comedy duo with a sketch comedy series. This is no longer the case.
Solo magic shows are a big bet for a channel; what if viewers don’t like the magician? Worse, what if they love them and the magician runs off to another channel? Even when you see a comedian given a huge new show, you’ll notice that the format will continue without them if they move to another channel. The channel will replace the host with another and plough forwards. This is so difficult to do with a solo magic show. If you’re watching Dynamo or Blaine, you’re watching them, not the format.
There remains, however, a solid opportunity for magicians to appear in two types of television formats.
- Guest Spots, like on America’s Got Talent, Penn and Teller: Fool Us, and talk shows like Jimmy Fallon.
- Gang Shows, like any of the six failed attempts at “Impractical Jokers with Magic.”
Today, let’s look at Gang Shows.
Btw, I hate the term “gang show”…
