The Future of the Internet is a Shambles

We almost never forward-promote stuff – our job being to snarkily dismiss, not talk up – but we’re making an exception today because of the magic word(s) when it comes to online content: audience interaction! Or is it “join the conversation” now? Whatever: it seems the three guys who make up The Shambles are reuniting to record / perform a commentary over this year’s Oscar’s ceremony. The two points of interest here are as follows:

A): While The Shambles were pretty funny back in the days of their c31 show, they haven’t performed together as a group for a number of years now (Sean “Lynchy” Lynch did short comedy segments solo on Ten’s ill-fated The Circle; Nath Valvo has a radio gig and a growing reputation based on his string of successful live shows; Anthony “Sos” Ziella has dropped off the face of the Earth). So comedy aside there’s also some novelty value in seeing them get back together, if only because they might just hate each other now. And isn’t awkward comedy “the in thing” now?

B): Supposedly it’s all going to be happening on the day at this link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/the-shambles  And you’re going to be able to interact with the guys as they crap on about the Oscars via the ustream page or twitter via the Shambles guy’s various handles. Live online heckling! And the whole thing will be archived on the guys’ YouTube page: http://www.youtube.com/shamlynchy

It’ll be interesting to see how all this pans out. The Shambles’ background is in community radio and television so something rough and ready is pretty much their style (according to the press release 2013 marks the ten year anniversary of their formation, so hopefully they know what they’re doing by now). Considering the excess of comedy talent in this country compared to the outlets available for it, moving online seems like the logical – if non-paying – way to go.

Whether this kind of thing works better as a bunch of online tweets rather than an actual broadcast is, again, one of the reasons to keep an eye on this: if it works you’d expect this kind of thing to become a lot more common.

And if it doesn’t, it’ll just be a shambles. Uh, zing?