Why "Got Talent" Loves Magic

Magic does incredibly well on TV and social media for several genetic reasons. Magicians are talented at what they do and deserve their success, but there's no denying that one show, in particular, seems to favor the magician.

“Got Talent” loves magic.

But they didn’t always. Back in the day, Simon Cowell was known to absolutely hate magic. That was until Got Talent began posting clips on the popular video site, YouTube—you may have heard of it.

Magic Travels Well.

“Travel” is a television term that means the content can be watched anywhere in the world, and often in any language. A good example of a television show that travels well is “You’ve Been Framed” or “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

Content that travels well is also very easy to syndicate. Syndication is when a show is sold to multiple countries around the world. It’s a little like how McDonalds restaurants pop up around the world with slightly different logos and adjusted menus to fit the taste of the local market.

A successful format is usually bought worldwide, and then also remade from scratch by America. Some Great examples of Syndicated shows are Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, The Office and Power Rangers.

(You NEED to listen to this podcast about the refugee, Haim Saban, who hustled his way into the entertainment business, and produced the mega-hit Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and became a billionaire media titan).

It’s always utterly incredible to see how America almost always manages to make their versions of British shows ever so incredibly American…

Content that travels is worth a lot of money. Got Talent was forced to change their position on magic when they realised it outperformed all of their clipped content online. Not only did they start raking in cash with their magic clips, but magicians could easily be flown off around the world to appear on every one of their shows. Succesful Got Talent magicians perform in multiple countries’ “talent shows.”

Now, I should state that there is some debate over what changed Got Talent’s opinion on magic. And there was a sudden change. I do believe that the fact that the clips perform so well is a major reason. The money from 429 million views, with unpaid performers, generates a minimum of $859,000 and most likely millions in Adsense.

It’s impossible to ignore the data. Magic outperforms any other artform in the Got Talent franchise. 20% of the top fifty videos are magic. The only artforms with similar levels of popularity are dance and music. And we already have enough shows celebrating dance and music and Got Talent wants to be the “variety” show.

Televisions shows tend to get preferential treatment in the YouTube ad partnership programme because their content tends to be very advertiser-friendly. The ad placing algorithms favour less risky content and advertisers are rarely upset to see their product alongside an AGT video.

There’s another rumoured reason why AGT loves magic, and it’s that if the winner is a magician, they can easily sell a spin-off magic TV series and a live Vegas show. With AGT set to get a juicy split on their profits for years after their win. How likely is a dancing dog act going to be able to sell a stand-alone TV series and a full vegas live show? Quite unlikely, but I’d sure as heck watch it.

It's worth noting that, though they've tried, they've never quite been able to launch a solo magician's long-term TV career off the back of a Got Talent win.

Let’s stick to the fact that magic performs well online, and it travels well. We’ll assume the fact the Got Talent franchise started liking magicians around the same time they started posting clips to YouTube was not a coincidence.

AGT’s tenth best-performing video is of an unpaid magician, and it has 59 million views. Not only have I never watched it, but I’ve also never heard of the performer.

One of AGT’s magic videos has 40 million views, I’ve never seen it, and it’s nearly six years old. There are new comments below it as recent as today…. but why?

Magic is Evergreen.

You can watch a David Copperfield special today, and though it might look a little odd, all of the magic holds up.

Magic actually sucks at being topical (which was the intended topic of this post, before I got distracted by AGT clips).

I’m not sure why magic is never topical. I think it might be because magicians are so force-fed this idea that they need to buy magic tricks as they are, or maybe it’s because magic can be challenging to create quickly. Anyways, magic is rarely topical, but it’s almost always evergreen.

A good place to look when thinking about evergreen content is comedians and musicals. Think of a great musical that’s closed because its content became dated. Then, think of Jerry Seinfeld, and how you can listen to every joke he made forty years ago, and it still holds up.

A lot of popular online comedians are topical comedians, with the rise of social media; there’s an urge to get in there first with a joke.

In recent years, though, we've seen more and more crowd work comedians rising online. This is mostly because of their ability to flood the feed with consistent content. But, for their biggest fans, their content still feels timely and topical – you get to see their crowd work from the night before and that's exciting.

The best bet is to be short term topical and long-term evergreen. People rush to watch the auditions when they air, but they remain watchable for years to come.,

AGT Loves Magic Because it Travels Well and It’s Evergreen.

You can watch an AGT magic clip from 2014 and not only not realise it’s old, but you also don’t care.

Right now, the only topical magic that exists is when a magician lazily scribbles letters on a couple of cards to finish their story deck routine—Vote Biden, We Love NHS, Free Britney, Kony 2012.

Statistically, I just insulted 10% of our readers.

Perhaps the fact that magic is so evergreen plays into why magic can sometimes feel dated to certain laypeople. Maybe if magic could be more topical it could break free of those stereotypes.