Hosted by Kevin Pollak Language English Length 1-2 Hours | Genre Interview Updates Sundays Direction Jason McIntyre | |
Kevin Pollak's Chat Show is a weekly interview program hosted by comedian and impressionist Kevin Pollak and streamed over the web on YouTube. The show airs live most Sundays from the M.I. Westside Comedy Theater in Santa Monica, California. Episodes are then archived on YouTube, as well as on iTunes and Earwolf. The show premiered on March 22, 2009, with guests LeVar Burton and Samm Levine.
Contents
Format
The show typically opens with Pollak at the table speaking directly to the viewers, which can consist of a simple introduction, an anecdote, a joke, this portion also includes sidebars with head writer, Jaime Fox, and side kick, Samm Levine. The majority of the show is taken up with long-form interview segments, typically with actors, writers or comics. Initial episodes would feature 2 hour-long interviews, but subsequent shows typically feature one guest per episode, averaging two hours in length. There are also a number of "games" Pollak plays with his guests, created by Jaime. Some of these include "Who Tweeted," which Samm hosts and reads 8 messages from Twitter, one at a time, all of which were written by either Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber or Tyra Banks. It's a contest between the guest and Kevin to see which can ring in and answer correctly. Each episode also includes "The Larry King Game" (also created by Jaime), in which guests perform a bad impression of TV personality Larry King, exposing personal information that Larry should never, but does in fact reveal, then a throw to the phones including a funny sounding city name. In 2010 the Kevin Pollak Chat Show was nominated for several Streamy Awards and won Best Live Show on the Internet.
History
Kevin Pollak's Chat Show started after Kevin Pollak met internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis at an underground poker game in Los Angeles. Pollak shared his vision for a web-based, live-streaming talk show with Calacanis. Mahalo.com, Calacanis' startup, had recently built a studio around the NewTek TriCaster and Calacanis offered to produce Pollak's show. The show is among the most popular podcasts for download on iTunes and had a strong following on its own website. The Chat Show is available in both audio and video format. On March 13, 2013 it was announced that they had joined the Earwolf network. The show began streaming on YouTube as of episode 165 on March 28, 2013.