The Best Reality TV Shows Are Happening On Dropout TV
Image; Polygon
Comedy has not had the best luck on the Internet over the last few years. The comedy streaming service Seeso shut down in 2017. Cracked fired much of its video staff the following year, causing them to spread to the Internet winds (see Maggie Mae Fish, Cody Johnston, etc.). College Humor went with these creators in 2020 after its parent company InterActive Corp. dropped the brand, allegedly forcing the CEO Sam Reich to lay off over a hundred staff to buy CH Media, the name for College Humor.
Yet it may surprise you that College Humor isn't dead but rather has blossomed. From nerdy game shows to fantastic D&D campaigns, some of the best reality TV Shows right now are being put forth by this brand.
When InterActive Corp. pulled the plug, College Humor had actually been going through a transitionary period. Realizing that the ad model of the Internet wasn't working for them, they launched a subscription platform called Dropout TV that not only hosted their classic comedic shorts but longer scripted content.
If you check out Dropout TV's library, you can see the legacy of this rapid growth period. Funny shows, like Gods of Food, a parody food documentary, or the sequel to the Toddlers & Tiaras spoof Precious Plum called See Plum Run, which comments on the 2016 presidential election. These shows were trying to take the classic College Humor formula and apply it to larger and longer content. These shows had a relatively impressive production value to them, with celebrity appearances from comedians like Mary Patrick Gleason and Betsy Sodaro.
The 2020 layoff made this production impossible. Every actor was fired except for two performers — Mike Trapp and Brennan Lee Mulligan. The shows these comedians were putting out before the layoff were two popular reality shows. Mike Trapp's was, Um, Actually, a fun nerdy game show about pedantic corrections. Brennan Lee Mulligan's was Dimension 20, a D&D comedy show. This was content that did not require the same resources as Gods of Food or See Plum Run and could be pumped out far more quickly and cheaply.
Since then, these two shows have reached a tremendous amount of success. Dimension 20 has over 1.5 million followers across all socials (the biggest being TikTok with over 700,000). And Um, Actually is not falling too far behind at just shy of a million.
Dimension 20 also has the added benefit of being a very iterative show, with Brennan Lee Mulligan doing a different theme every season. From 1980s fantasy to outer space, Brennan is constantly toying with new genres and topes, bringing on other comedians to fit various roles. In one season, he brought on the Mackelroy Brothers for a season of tiny creatures doing a heist, and in another, nerd influencers like Erika Ishii and Amy Vorpahl.
In later seasons, Brennan isn't always the Game Master (GM). He has brought on other talented GMs like Aabria Iyengar of Critical Role fame and game design superstar Gabe Hicks to make this brand more than just about him. This allows every season to feel fresh as new creative voices not only come in as players but as architects for the season.
With these two successes, the network has been able to rebuild, and we are seeing them launch even more new reality shows. Recently, there was the release of the show Dirty Laundry. Hosted by Lily Du, the show is about contestants trying to guess who submitted which "shameful" secret. The series has not even been out too long and already has enjoyed moderate success sitting at around half a million followers.
Another is Game Changer, where every new episode has players participating in a completely different game show. This series technically started before the College Humor Layoff but has recently resumed production to tremendous success. The series has over a million followers across all social, the biggest being Tik Tok.
Cleverly, CEO Sam Reich has started to use the Game Changer series almost like a reality show incubator. Dropout has already spun off the premise for one of the episodes in this series, called Make Some Noise, where contestants have to do various sound-based skits. It's quite frankly impressive to see how versatile and creative they are being with their content.
Looking back to where College Humor and even Dropout TV started, it has had quite a transformation. For cost reasons, the company has moved away from scripted comedy to the reality TV shows that are now its bread and butter, and they are performing exceptionally well. Dimension 20 and Um, Actually are powerhouses that have allowed the network to build up quite the library.
Part of this success is bittersweet. The content they were putting out before the layoff was funny and impressive in its own right. It's sad that the legacy of College Humor shorts had to end just because one company refused to (cheaply) let go of IP it wasn't even interested in using anymore (note to executives out there — don't be dicks like this).
Yet that being said, it's impressive what Dropout TV has managed to achieve in a very short period. In an age where independent comedy has been tough to sustain, unless you have a big streaming service behind you or an even more powerful personal brand, Dropout shows us that it's still entirely possible for subversive comedy to succeed if even thrive.