"Hacks" creators on collaboration, S5, and the state of comedy

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Tell you what, we're gonna do some news and then we're just gonna sit back and have a chat.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace

in Los Angeles.

I'm Kai Risdahl.

It is Wednesday, today, the 13th of August.

Good as always to have you along, everybody.

We are going to talk television in a little bit, specifically the business of comedy right now with the creators of the HBO show Hacks.

But we are going to begin because it's our job with the business of this economy right now.

If you're a regular listener, and probably even if you're not, you know that a whole slew of the data we use to understand this economy comes from the government.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Department of Energy, I could go on, but I won't.

The challenge, and this is entirely separate from the looming and very real political threat to government data, but the challenge is that the way the feds get that data doesn't seem to be working anymore.

And that, as Marketplaces Bree Benishwill reports, is becoming a real problem.

So to come up with a total of how many jobs are out there, how many were rapid, what's the unemployment rate, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, they just ask.

120, 130,000 different businesses and government agencies, about 60,000 households.

John Schwabish is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute.

About two-thirds of households get back to them, and 93% of businesses and governments answer.

Eventually.

It can turn out that companies just can't answer that on time.

Erica Groshen is a former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Sometimes it takes months, which is why you get revisions to the data.

So a lot of businesses and people do respond, though the number is down a bit.

The bigger issue is how many of them sign up to be surveyed in the first place.

Those rates have also gone down.

Out of all the businesses the government asks to work with it on the jobs report, the percentage that agree has gone down from 75% in 2015 to just 35% in April.

In the end, that means an overall response rate of less than half.

Once you get response rates dropping below 50%,

you start to get very concerned about what that is actually telling you about what's going on in the economy.

Paul Donovan is chief economist with UBS Global Wealth Management.

Because if you see a survey with a response rate below 50%,

almost by definition, the people who are filling in the survey are a bit weird.

Not like weird, weird, but they are just not the majority.

They might be motivated by anger at the economy or something else that just makes them more eager or able to participate.

And that can introduce biases.

Again, Erica Groshen.

BLS can correct by weighting.

It can correct for the biases that it knows about.

Differences between industries, differences in employer size, things like that.

Groshen says with these corrections, the overall accuracy of the jobs numbers hasn't changed much.

In technical terms, the standard error isn't that much affected because the sample is really huge.

What has suffered mostly has been granularity.

As in, it's harder to zoom into the economy economy to see what's happening in specific locations, specific industries.

Basically, the jobs numbers are still good as a Monet,

not so good close up.

In New York, I'm Sibri Benishore for Marketplace.

Wall Street today, traders are betting bigly on an interest rate cut come September.

We will have the details when we do the numbers.

Measurement challenges aside, the American labor market clearly ain't as strong as it used to be.

That is a problem for workers, of course, but it's also a problem for certain kinds of businesses.

The jobs platform indeed says postings are down almost 8% year-over-year.

Same general vibe for LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter and all the other job sites, which typically charge would-be employers to promote their gigs.

MarketBlaze Matt Levin has more on how job sites cope with fewer jobs.

Salon Manager Brittany Blue at Bespoke Hair in downtown San Diego can see firsthand the labor market may be turning.

We have had people who, you know, are maybe stretching their colors out a little bit longer.

They're maybe not getting haircuts as often.

That's obviously not great for business, but there is a silver lining.

Blue posted a job opening for a front desk coordinator on ZipRecruiter the day before we chatted.

She's very pleased with the early results.

We've gotten seven applications just yesterday, and three out of the seven that we've reviewed would be potential candidates.

We're definitely impressed with the quality of the candidates that we've gotten this time.

For companies like Bespoke Hair, who are still hiring right now, a softer labor market is is pretty great.

More impressive applicants, fewer job postings from other companies to compete with.

For online job sites, though, not so much.

The overall job market right now obviously is not growing fast and you're seeing declines in job posts.

Jonathan Stoll is the chief operating officer for Handshake, a job matching platform that specializes in entry-level jobs for college students.

Usually Handshake makes its money from big companies paying up to seven figures for job posting services.

But more recently, they found a way to monetize the technology that may be taking away some of those entry-level jobs in the first place.

We're working directly with the foundational AI models to help them train their models directly through Human Data.

Human Data here is a doctoral student in music theory or biochemistry hired to make sure chatbots give the right answers to questions on, say, chord progressions or nucleic acids.

They can earn up to 200 bucks an hour.

And sure, some people may find it depressing that our nation's brightest young minds are accepting gig work to train their possible robot replacements, but Stoll projects Handshake AI will soon make the company $100 million a year, nearly half its estimated revenue.

As jobs change, as careers change, as the economy changes, in whatever way possible, Handshake needs to evolve and be super agile along that path.

While job postings have declined in recent months, applications have surged.

Boston University marketing professor Andre Fradkin has consulted with companies like Indeed.

He says while monetizing would-be employers is tough right now, monetizing would-be employees is easier.

Job seekers are actually going to be willing to pay more because they're really going to be desperate for a job.

There are fewer jobs to go around.

Think LinkedIn Premium or Indeed Pro, which for a monthly fee allows users to see who's snooping their profile.

Those paid subscriptions also offer something called top choice, a digital signal you can attach to your application to tell employers, I really, really, really want this job.

In an era where ChatGPT can whip up a resume and cover letter in an instant, Fratkin says that signal is more valuable than ever.

Here you have thousands of applications for a single position.

How are you going to sit through that?

Of course, paying for the privilege of just getting your application considered might be a tough expense to swallow, especially if you don't have steady work.

Rashida Brown got laid off from her six-figure job in customer billing support in January.

I started applying for jobs in February, and I did some this morning.

It's over 400 total.

400 applications, two interviews.

Brown has four kids.

Her husband is still working, but her unemployment benefits run out in two weeks.

I went into this very foolishly thinking, I'll be fine.

You know, maybe I'll take 10K less a year.

And now I'm saying I'll take 50% less and I might be willing to go lower.

She says she still finds value in LinkedIn, especially the online community of other people looking for work.

But she hasn't tried LinkedIn Premium yet.

I hate to say it this way, but I think it's because I feel that I am very qualified with a lot of experience, a master's degree in business, and I just feel like I shouldn't have to pay for anything additional.

But she says if she keeps striking out on the job search, she'll at least try the free trial.

I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace.

We're going to do a little life-imitating art thing right now.

The art is the HBO Max series hacks, of which, full disclosure, I am a fan.

For those perhaps not in the know, though, Gene Smart plays 70-year-old comedian Deborah Vance, who teams up with Ava Daniels, a much younger comedy writer played by Hannah Einbinder.

The show is all about the twists and turns of Deborah's career, culminating in the most recent season, season four, with a foray into the world of late night.

The life part is actually late night today, CBS canceling Colbert and the very business model of late night comedy very much under the microscope.

Hacks season five is already in production.

The other day, though, the two of the show's creators, Gene Statsky and Paul W.

Downs, Downs acts in the show as well.

They both came to Marketplace World Headquarters here in downtown L.A.

First of all, thank you for coming all the way downtown.

That's a great question.

Thanks for having me.

We love L.A.

We love driving around.

As do we all.

We should say here that you guys are only two of the trio that run this show.

Lucia Agiello, your wife, partner in professional and personal things, is, I understand, actually at work today.

She is.

She's running the room.

Yep.

She's running the writer's room right now.

What does that mean, running the writer's room?

Great question.

Really good question.

Because don't you just put a bunch of people in a room and they write?

A writer's room is kind of like

a nine-hour long meeting,

which sounds, I think, scary.

Nine is actually humane.

Nine is humane.

I think some rooms are humane.

Some rooms are 24-hour.

But so Lucia is in the room right now.

And yeah, when we say run the room, just kind of guiding the conversation amongst our writers, whether it's talking about a story, figuring out the beats of it, or if we're more into a script, like maybe a script has been written and we're going through it and

tweaking dialogue and punching it up.

I read somewhere that when, specifically you three, work together and look at each other's scripts,

it's more positive than critiquing, shall we say.

You just highlight the stuff you like, and then you go from there.

Yeah, I mean, that's something that we, at least Lucia and I learned early on, was that positive reinforcement was the most helpful.

So we would write the same scene at the same time, swap, and then highlight things that we liked.

And then we would come together to combine them.

And we've done that too.

Yeah, we've done that too.

It's a good method.

The problem is

it takes more time.

It takes a long time.

As we get closer to production, we then realize we can't be writing the same scene.

We need to divide up the scenes.

Yeah.

There's such a mind-meld that I do feel like...

It would be a little bit redundant to do the same scene at the same time because we know

we do have a hive mind.

Well, I mean, you know, especially at at this point, right?

You're working on season five.

You have incubated these characters now in these stories for literally years.

So there can't be a lot, a whole lot of, oh my goodness, moments, right?

I don't know, maybe there are.

Well,

we try to have them.

And it's great when you have them still.

I mean, I think that's the

challenge.

And I think we've all had that experience of a show that you love that then kind of starts hitting the same beats and you maybe don't feel as taken care of.

Am I right that this is it, right?

It's season five and then you're done?

Well, we we know where we're ending.

We've always known we've known that for a long time.

And you really want to service all the stories in the ensemble and sort of give them their due.

And so we're trying to figure out now how many episodes that will take.

And it may take more than we can do in one season, which is ten.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Sorry, I'm going to jump ahead of my list of questions.

How worried are you about sticking the landing on this thing?

Because there's a long and bloody trail of amazing series that haven't done that.

Should we not talk about that?

No, we're terrified.

That's the other reason that we're, I think, we hesitate to want to finish this season even because we're like, let's push off the very, very last moment.

That said, the thing that's hard is the flips and tricks that get you to the landing.

I think the landing we feel good about.

It's just, it's still scary because you have people who now love it and feel these characters are real.

And so their reactions to anything they do is really intense, which is cool.

I mean, that's, you know.

the dream.

I want to talk about topicality for a minute.

And Jen, most of this goes to you since your background is

late night and writing, and you've been in those writers' rooms.

Yep.

I'm going to assume people have seen the show or at least know about the show, Deborah Vance, and have comments.

If not, pause this season.

Yeah, right.

Well, actually, wait, before I get to this question, how do you guys feel about spoilers, by the way?

For the season, I think at this point, for season four, it's four.

I told you, I think so.

For season four, it's okay.

All right.

So, Deborah gets her dream job, late night host.

Yes.

And then it, for a whole bunch of reasons, kind of implodes.

You wrote this before the Colbert thing happened, before Late Night sort of was on the corporate chopping block, as it were.

That's right.

How did you feel watching that happen in real life?

I mean, just as fans of Late Night and the Institution and fans of Colbert, we were really saddened and taken aback by it.

One of the things we wanted to explore was always this intersection of art and commerce and how the entertainment industry, especially now, is changing more and more.

And so we knew going into having Deborah have a late-night show, that would certainly be something she encountered and dealt with because she'd never really dealt with that before.

She's been really kind of like a lone wolf, but now she's put into this corporate meets art environment and there's a whole different set of rules.

And

especially in our current day, there's like a lot of rules that are changing as we're seeing.

And so it was, yeah, it was pretty crazy to have written that and then see that play out well you have nice things to say about HBO and and the corporate suits as it were yeah

and you know just because that's where the bread is buttered I suppose but I I will say huge Helen Hunt fan I hated that character oh hated that character

intense she's intense

I know I know I feel like you guys ruined Helen Hunt for me I'm so sorry well that was her you know she she honestly I don't know she channeled something she really did because

I love Helen Hunt too and she was so not her when we were working you know, when we were acting together, it was bizarre.

But yeah, you know, she represents somebody who is also feeling, I think, pressure from the top down.

And look, she was trying to help.

It was just, it was a little sideways.

And I actually love that moment

in the season when she says, I started my career PAing for Terence Malik.

I would love to just support artists.

I don't just want to give people a digital spin-off.

That's not where I get my joy.

But it's the world we live in, you know?

And so she really wanted, I think, Deborah's show to succeed, though I think to Deborah, it just seemed like

a contrived way of doing business that wasn't the best thing for the comedy.

And as a comedian, you know, she's a purist, and that was the most important thing to her.

Do you all worry that once you're done, it's going to be tough for a show like this about comedy

to go someplace?

Or

if the show is good enough, it's going to make it, right?

So

I think if the idea is compelling, it can make it, but you need people to champion it.

And that's why I have spoken so highly of our partners at HBO Max, because even though, yes, that is where the bread is buttered, as you said, they really have been so supportive of us creatively and took a risk on a show that when you hear the pitch about a woman in her 70s and this young entitled writer she's forced to hire, you know, it's a little inside baseball.

But we always strive to do is make it as universal as we can and make it appealing to people that aren't in the industry in any way.

What was the pitch, by the way?

Well, it was a script.

It was a long script.

Really?

So you wrote it, wrote it.

Oh, we wrote it.

It's a 35-minute pitch.

Wow.

Yeah.

It was sort of like, here's the log line of the show, and here's what it's really about, and here's this character and her backstory.

Here's what some episodes would be, which ended up being episodes we've done.

And here's what the ending is.

But

already back then, you knew the ending.

And then oh, we pitched the last scene.

We patched the last scene to the last episode in the pitch, which is, I think, a rare thing, to be honest.

I don't know.

It's a gutsy move.

I mean, I'm no writer, but that seems like a gutsy move.

And it was discussed by a lot of people.

But we talked about it a lot.

So wait, there are people out there who know.

Sorry to keep interrupting, but there are people out there who know.

Yes, there are executives.

Does that not terrify you?

I don't think they remember.

I don't think they remember.

I think if I didn't buy the show, they don't remember.

Honestly, executives, I think, hear so many pitches that to their credit, they have to hear so many.

I've actually had an executive who passed on this show

years later be telling me what a fan they were and then say, thank God I didn't pass on it.

And they just

smart.

Just keep your mouth shut and go on.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But you know what?

HBO Max Max doesn't know because Susanna Makos, who we pitched to, stopped us before we finished and said, I'd like to make this with you, which was amazing.

What's that feeling?

What's that feeling like?

I've never had it before.

It's amazing.

Because a pitch is so, you know, it can feel so laborious, and you're like, is this hitting?

Especially you start with COVID, we started doing them on Zoom.

And so there's not that in the room feeling.

So it can be really scary for someone who's not.

And you're so exposed.

You're so exposed.

You're saying your ideas, and someone can say, no.

And that's hard.

Yeah, and the waiting period after is terrible.

So to get someone to immediately say yes, you don't have to like wait and go through that is amazing.

We spoke for a solid half hour, the three of us.

We'll have a snippet in part two coming up.

First, though, let's do the numbers.

Dow Industrial is up 463 today, just over 1%, 44,922.

The NASDAQ added 31 points, just over a tenth of 1%, 21,713.

The S ⁇ P 500 gained 20 points, about a third of 1%,

64, and 66.

Walmart is extending its 10% employee discount to almost all of the groceries it sells.

That's according to the Wall Street Journal today.

But the bigger news in the grocery biz is that Amazon is going to start offering same-day delivery of perishable foods in about a thousand cities nationwide.

It's going to more than double the number of cities is before the year is over.

Amazon up one and four tenths percent.

Walmart slid about two and a half percent today.

Bond prices they were up.

The yield on the tenure, Tino down 4.23%.

You're listening to Marketplace.

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This is Marketplace.

I'm Kai Rizdahl.

As promised, part two with Jen Statsky and Paul W.

Downs of Hacks.

Can we talk mechanics here for a minute, please?

You are a writer, you're a producer, you're about to be a director.

You are a writer, producer, director, actor.

Both each of you pick one.

What's your favorite, Jen?

Oh, wow.

Producing.

Shocker.

Wow.

Why shocker?

I don't know.

Maybe that's not true.

I guess writing.

I guess at the end of the day, writing is my favorite.

Producing is a little bit.

Yeah, I guess writing.

Writing.

We'll go with writing.

Okay.

Well.

The one that I think I get the most kicks out of is acting.

Yeah, I hear that.

It's to me the one where I turn everything off, and so it feels like the least amount of work.

Like, I find directing to be a lot of work.

There's so many things to weigh in addition to the creative, whereas when you're acting, you're just listening to a scene partner and playing.

Now, let me throw the showrunner bit out there, too, because

years and years and years ago, we had Michael Schurr on the program a couple of times.

And he has worked with

producer pets.

And I asked him about the showrunning thing, and I said, how do you learn to do that?

And he said, the only way to learn how to do it is to do it.

Speaking of terrifying and working 40-hour days and all that jazz,

how do you, I mean, Paul, you specifically, how do you act and direct and run the show?

How do you do that?

Well, luckily, I have two partners that really help me.

I mean, how Mike Sher does it alone, I don't know.

The thing that you really need to do to learn how to do this is be in writers' rooms, potentially have set experience, and watch people do it.

But, you know, that's something that the writer strike was really fighting for was more time on set because people need to be trained to make shows.

And if they have short orders for streaming shows that they're there for for 16 weeks and then they're gone, they're not there for the whole process to see all that it takes to make it.

Trevor Burrus So that actually goes to the pipeline question, not just comedy, but what it is that you all do, right?

You start as a baby writer and you're in that room and you don't know anything, and then you proceed and develop.

Is that harder now, Jen?

It's certainly harder to find those opportunities.

The model has been upended in the last decade or so as streaming has kind of really turned everything upside down.

And

network TV and even cable TV, the way it was done for so long was exactly what we're talking about.

You had a staff and they sat in that writer's room and they learned from people who had done it longer than them how to do it.

And then you got on set and you saw how the process worked.

And like, those are all incredibly valuable steps to learning how to run your own show.

And if you don't follow those steps, the quality can suffer once you have your own show.

Are you hopeful for the industry?

I am.

I mean, Well, there was a little bit of a pause.

Let me just say.

Well, I am.

It's so funny because we're now talking

three weeks after Colbert was canceled.

Right.

This late-night institution, which is the place that a lot of writers get their first job.

A lot of baby writers start there, and a lot of stand-ups and comedians get their conversation.

Yeah.

So it's...

I am optimistic.

I think our show tries to be optimistic.

I mean, Deborah Vance leaves her show willingly.

Right, right, right.

Because she says, I'm not going to do this.

Spoiler, by the way.

Spoiler.

Yeah, it is a spoiler.

I'm sorry.

I've said this before, but but Colbert was a number one rated late night show.

I think the fact that it was losing money isn't a Stephen Colbert problem to me.

It's a business problem.

And I think we're in the...

creative arts to figure things out.

And so I am hopeful that it can happen.

But it is scary that there's less opportunity now.

Yeah, I think there's less opportunity because there's so much outsized pressure put on these properties.

Like Comedy Central was so great because young people or just people who hadn't done it before were given a shot the way, you know, Abby Jacobson and Alana Glazer were giving a shot for Broad City.

City, and that's you know was a show that was massively important to his first directing job.

Yeah, she was first directing

TV.

And there was just you know the way that worked.

It was part of Comedy Central, it was part of a cable package.

There was just less pressure on each individual property.

There's so much pressure now for a show to be a hit right away to grab subscribers because it's all been funneled into the streaming model and to travel globally.

And yes, comedy does not travel as well always as other genres.

And so I think that it is a business problem that is being sometimes said as a comedy problem.

And I don't think it's a comedy problem.

I think it's a business problem.

Last thing, and I'll let you guys get back to the writer's room so that Lucia doesn't have to do all the work.

Season five, you know where the end is.

It might seem far away now, but you guys are winding down-ish.

I'm not going to ask you what's next.

I'm going to ask you whether you have time now to think about what's next.

Or are you just going to take like six months off and decompress?

I would love that.

I would love to take time off.

Six months would be great, but I don't think we're going to do that.

No, we're not going to do that.

We took two days between season four and five, so I don't think we're going to do that.

We are thinking about what's next.

And

the benefit of making something with your friends is that we also socialize so that when we turn off.

You don't get sick of each other?

Sorry.

I mean, come on.

Luckily, we have to.

I love the people I work with, but I'm not going to.

Yes, I know, but we did it the other way.

We like found friends and made each other.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

We weren't put together.

We found each other.

And then it's a chosen family.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So, you know, there were some personal issues that came up throughout this.

And we've really been like, I think, forged in fire.

The three of us running the show and just the entire cast and cruise.

There were births, there were deaths.

There were, you know, it was just, you know, there's a lot.

We have really become very bonded.

Thanks, you guys, for coming.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks a bunch.

Thank you.

We will get the video from that interview up eventually.

I thought it was really good.

Super interesting.

Too much talking, though, on the rest of the show, not enough time, so we got to go.

Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Justin Dueller, Drew Joss, Dad, Gary Oak, Keith Charlton, Thorpe One Collister, and Becca Weinman.

Jeff Peters is the manager of media production.

And I'm Kyle Rizdahl.

We will see you tomorrow, everybody.

This is APM.

The Trump administration is making deep cuts to education research.

The cancellation notices started coming.

When the contract is cut, the study just dies.

It's all happening just as schools are trying to make use of research to improve reading instruction.

There would not have been a science of reading without the federal funding.

It wouldn't have happened.

I'm Emily Hanford on our new episode of Soul to Story: What the Trump Cuts Mean for the Science of Reading.

Go to your podcast app and follow Soul to Story.