Behind the Scenes
Here is the rehearsal video and article that ran in the local paper about my sports comedy empire in the making…
With 81,000+ YouTube Fans: He Dreams of TV sit-com
By Jo-Ann Jennings
Bixby Editor
[email protected] | Posted: Friday, October 5, 2012 12:00 am
YouTube sports update star Bill Becker claims to be a grumpy old man.
“But, Bill! You’re so upbeat when you meet people!”
“It’s all fake,” he claims.
Bill Becker and his son Baylor Becker have taken YouTube by the microphone and are setting out to charm the world of television with Becker’s grumpy ol’ sports updater, Bill Becker playing Bill Becker. He figures if he can get enough fans to watch the show on Youtube, he can move on with scripts he’s already written for a situation comedy on television. And why not?
He practices sometimes at a comedy club, the Looney Bin, in Tulsa where he makes jokes on some Wednesday nights during open-mike night as a stand-up comedian.
“I have always been interested in sports and comedy,” says Becker. “I have had the idea for a long time. I finally got the motivation.”
The YouTube show is filmed at the Becker home in Bixby which Becker says started out as really primitive.
“Baylor is the director,” he said of his third oldest son of five. “We do eight or nine clips and then put it together and put it on the Internet. I’m working on a companion TV show which is my ultimate dream. It’s about a grump old man who gives a sports update. It’s like Saturday Night Life, but it’s sport oriented.”
The material includes a sports preview and weekly sports update. “The clips average five minutes,” he said.
The Becker duo loads the material onto YouTube and hosts it for free, and then they put it into an actual website, www.weekendsportsupdate.com. The current show is in the middle of the page, and the previous weeks episodes are available below that.
Becker appreciates the fact that YouTube keeps a count. The week of the interview he ‘d had 81,000 viewers. “That’s the record. The first show we had 24 viewers. We usually have about 50,000. We promote the show on Twitter and other websites.” Friends also put it on their Facebook pages. He uploaded one of his shows to Funny or Die.
YouTube, says Becker, allows someone like him to do personal projects inexpensively. “In the old days, we would have had to go to a TV studio.”
“Erin Andrews has a pretty good name, so I offered her the cohost job and had fun with it,” Becker continued, speaking of the female sportscaster, journalist, and television personality who currently hosts FOX College Football for Fox Sports. His job offer comes up first when doing a search for Andrews. “I sent a shout out to George Clooney, offering to play one-on-one basketball and raise money for his favorite charity.”
Becker says his show is definitely PG13, but there is never foul language.
He keeps a notebook and comes up with stories as the week progressing. Then he writes the script on Saturday and shoots on Saturday night or Sunday morning.
“It’s my passion,” Bill Becker says. “I have tried to network with other people who are trying to do something. There’s a girl in Detroit who hosts acapella songs every day; we try and cross promote. All you can do is keep throwing stuff out there, and some day it might hit big. It’s fun, and it’s just trying to let more people know about it. It just takes someone’s sharing it with a friend.”