Thursday, May 19, 2005

Get Rich Quick Idea #1

I often have good business ideas, but inevitably they're for someone else. They aren't usually the sorts of things I'm interested in doing, or that I'd be willing to do the start-up work for. I think I'll start posting them here for others to use--and I'll request only a nominal fee (on the honor system) for their use. I make no guarantees as to their profitability, nor do I guarantee that I am the first to think of them--although, if I get the idea from someone else, I will credit them--so if it's posted here, and not credited to anyone else, it's my own original thought, even if someone else may have actually come up with it before me (you follow?).

So, beginning my numbering with this one, here's the Great Thought of this morning:

Network news is quickly losing its market share, partially (perhaps mostly) due to the Internet an partially due to mere indifference of the public. This idea may buy some extra life for network news, or may be the basis for an internet news program.

Instead of hiring the same old prima donna talking heads with big hair to sit at the studio desk and read the news and make concerned faces and noises at the proper times while sucking down 6-7 figure salaries, hire some gifted readers with good voices to read the news. Yeah, I know, that's just radio. But here's the good idea--get some monkeys, dress them up as anchor-persons, and let them cavort on the studio for the video portion of the broadcast. Now don't get me wrong--don't train them to sit and pretend to read the news (if you do, they'll just start demanding 6-7 figure salaries). And you can't cheat and just run clips and old monkey footage. This has to be live action (or recorded but largely unedited) footage. Just get some monkeys, apes, whatever, put 'em in some suits, and set 'em loose on the news desk set. You could do this with a regular group of monkeys, or you could switch up from time to time--today it's chimps, next week orangutans, the following gibbons or mountain gorillas.

Now here's where we make the real money--every show, you have an interview or guest segment. A politician, bureaucrat, activist, whatever is invited to come on the show. They can make whatever statement they want to, talk the whole time about whatever they want to--and no one will ask them hard questions, interrupt, or confront them with inconvenient facts. But they have to sit on stage with the monkeys, no one will interfere with anything the monkeys do while they are there (i.e. no one will prevent the monkeys from doing things to the guest), the guest cannot harm the monkeys in any way, and the guest may not leave until the time on the segment has expired.

Additional market share could be garnered by providing the monkeys with alcohol, sex toys, weapons, and other potentially useful and amusing items. The producers of the program could also exercise a sort of editorial control by matching the species of monkeys to appropriate guests--small hyper monkeys for guests who are merely annoying, and large mountain gorillas to ass-rape major politicians. Granted, the latter may require some training, so make sure the politician is available for several rehearsals prior to air time.

I'm willing to talk reasonable payment terms: barter, small cash payment, a small percentage of the net, whatever.

1 comment:

liberranter said...

Or how about this variation:

Have a panel segment in which a politician and a toddler are both interviewed by the host. Have the host ask the hard-hitting political questions of the toddler, then ask cute, child-like questions of the politician.