Midwest Teen Sex Show: From the web to Comedy Central
Will this finally make young adults care about sex? Nikol Hasler hopes so
Andrew Mager
Nikol Hasler
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Nikol Hasler has built up quite the online reputation when it comes to sex. Ask anyone who has seen her on Midwest Teen Sex Show, a smart and witty webcast Hasler created with Guy Clark and Britney Barber that uses comedy to talk about young-adult sexuality. Now the former Waukesha resident is ready to bring the show to a larger audience: In May, Comedy Central announced plans to develop Midwest Teen Sex Show into a television series. Hasler and her collaborators have been busy casting actors, hiring crew members, and scouting locations in California—the show traditionally has been shot in Wisconsin and Illinois—with shooting scheduled to begin at the end of July. The A.V. Club recently talked to Hasler about working with Comedy Central and what viewers can expect from the TV version of Midwest Teen Sex Show.
The A.V. Club: How did Midwest Teen Sex Show end up on Comedy Central? It was a little less than a year ago that you were pitching everywhere in Hollywood.
Nikol Hasler: Yeah, I think we did six network pitches in one week. That was after several months of preparing the pitch, just so that the pitch would be presentable to all the networks. We’d go in, do the little song and dance, and see who’s interested. As far as I understand—I didn’t know this at the time—this is pretty standard for how long it takes.
AVC: How did the Comedy Central pitch go?
NH: I remember saying afterward, “Well, that was a good time. Now I understand why they’re not Tragedy Central.” I do remember really liking pitching to them and getting the feeling that they would allow us more creative control, and they were the kind of network that would do a lot of good marketing and advertising to back our show. Plus, they’re letting us retain ownership of the website. From the beginning, that was something we were looking for. We didn’t want to sell Midwest Teen Sex Show as a site. We can’t produce any new episodes while we’re doing shows for them, but we can still do supplemental materials, and we can still do the live show, and we can still provide things for the audience we’ve already built, so that it’s not like we’ve just abandoned them and sold out. Even though if someone asked me to abandon them and sell out I would ask, “How much?” [Laughs.]
AVC: Was the show you pitched the show you see online now? Or was it something different?
NH: We did a “sizzle” reel for them. We put together some of the finest moments, including a lot of the press shots. Like Bill O’Reilly saying, “Who is this loon?” That’s my favorite part. [Laughs.] It’s like one of the proudest moments of my life. Then we talked about how we would take our content as we have it now and turn it into a half-hour of television. Right as we talked about doing that, we started experimenting with different ideas that we had. We’re going to retain the narrator sequences and follow those up with sketches. We’re also going to do more man-on-the-street Q&A, and we’ve got a few surprises, some different sketch styles we’ve been working on.
AVC: Midwest Teen Sex Show launched online about two years ago, and now you’re in the process of putting together a pilot for a basic-cable network. That’s a quick progression.
NH: You think? I can’t believe that it’s been two years. It feels longer to me, I guess. Thinking of it in the two-year format feels like, “Wow, that was two years. I can’t believe it took us so long to do something.” But one of the main problems our show has had in the web format is finding sponsorship. It’s nearly impossible.
AVC: Because of the content? Or because it’s harder to convince someone to spend money on an online show?
NH: It’s a combination of both. People have a hard enough time finding funding beyond text ads for their shows online. But if you combine teens and sex, well, I mean everyone knows that teens don’t have sex. That’s why we spend so much money on advertising to get them to have sex. We put out all these sexy jean ads because we know not enough teens are having sex.
AVC: And once they do have sex—
NH: Their penises fall off.
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