The Gong Show Gambit

I’m not sure how many people out there remember watching the Gong Show from 1976 to 1980; a combination of talent contest and self-parody of such competitions. Hosted by Chuck Barris (who may or may not have been a CIA assassin during the 1960’s and 1970’s), it featured a lot of rather dubious “talent” and the occasional real performer (including Andrea McArdle, Cheryl Lynn, Paul Reubens, RuPaul, Mare Winningham, impressionist Michael Winslow, and bands like Oingo Boingo and Green Jelly). At the time it was widely considered one of the worst shows in the history of television; today it is often held up as the inspiration for the wave of “reality” television that has appeared over the past decade – meaning that Mr. Barris still has a lot to answer for, even if he never actually killed anyone.

For our purposes, the important point to recognize about the Gong Show was actually made during its own genesis story, staring the regular cast and crew. The basic concept is that while a talent show depending on good performances and solid talent will eventually run out of performers willing to compete for $516.32 (the grand prize; allegedly the SAG minimum for a day’s work at the time), a talent show featuring bad performers would NEVER run out of contestants. This has proven to be true, giving us the initial stages of “American Idol” and similar competitions, yet it also has applications for other types of programming.

Take, for example, the Food Network’s travel-themed show, Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, which I have also had occasion to watch recently. Technically, this show is scouring America looking for GOOD food, but the web page offering viewers the opportunity to suggest new venues to visit means that quite a few subjective favorites – things the recommender loves that are not, actually, very good – will come to the attention of the Food Network. And while the show to date has raved about everything they encounter, there is a definite comedic element about the program, starting with the name and moving on to the host’s interactions with the proprietors, which are often over the top.

My point here is that there is no way for this show to ever run out of potential segments. Every community in America has a “greasy spoon” somewhere that is actually wonderful – and which only the locals really know about. Even if they do run out of good diners (which seems unlikely), they can still feature “dives” that have only character and location to recommend them. Even better, a lot of people go into the restaurant business in the first place because they like interacting with customers, which means that on almost every episode, the show encounters genuine characters for its energetic host to interact with – something else they will probably never run out of.

How does this translate to other (non-television) types of business, I hear some of you asking? The exact model does not, of course; very few of us will become television producers if we aren’t already. The concept, however, is quite sound. The number of customers in any field who are already superbly trained, professionally equipped, correctly marketed and ideally capitalized is going to be very small; the number of people who are going to need help in one or more of these areas is going to be proportionally large. As an integral part of the Planning cycle, we as managers must ask where we can find these large groups of potential customers/business partners who need something we have, who require help with something we can teach them, or whom we can promote, employ, or capitalize on in order to achieve our goals.

And if there are no such groups of people in our field – then we need to rethink our business model altogether…