Zach Anner Uses Reddit To Connect With Fans And Resurrect His Show

from the rollin'-with-reddit dept

Tue, Aug 7th 2012 3:41am — Timothy Geigner

As more and more artists and entertainers come to understand that the old gatekeepers of culture are finding themselves without any gates to keep, the opportunities continue to expand. Such is the story of Zach Anner, a comedian who briefly had a show on Oprah's OWN network. Anner was born with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair to get around. His show, which involved him traveling around the country experiencing different locations and interacting with people, won an OWN network contest largely due to the Reddit community's votes. Where the story used to end was in the show's cancellation after only six episodes.

But that's not how it works anymore. Good News has the story of Anner's using the same Reddit community that voted for him the first time around to resurrect his show for release on YouTube.

What's more, Anner is going in hard connecting with his fans. The show's tagline is "Do you have an Internet? Then you can be part of it!"

"Anner and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian developed a plan to use the site to make Riding Shotgun a much more participatory endeavor than other shows. Last month, Reddit users helped Anner select the cities the series will visit. Now Anner’s using his official Subreddit to collect ideas of what to do in each city. He’s even using Reddit to crowdfund gas for the road."

The end result is Riding Shotgun will continue to be made and his fans will get to be directly involved and invested. So, we have an example of the old gatekeepers failing to keep a show available, while a new model for the business of a television show is succeeding. We'll have to see how this works out long term, but it's heartening when the internet helps culture win out in the end.

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Filed Under: connecting with fans, crowd, gatekeepers, zach anner

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Ninja (profile), 7 Aug 2012 @ 3:52am

Sshhh.. I hear the trolls coming...

Good to see such things happening. It can be incredibly frustrating to see your favorite series canceled because reasons taken from the MAFIAA collective arses.

Now we only have to wait the MAFIAA suicide. They have a quite resilient foot considering how much they've been shooting it...
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anon, 7 Aug 2012 @ 4:40am

REDDIT
What amazes me is how large Reddit has become , i first started using Reddit around 2 years ago when there was not that much traffic and digg was still successful, To see how it has grown is amazing, a lot of people talk about Reddit now and most of my family hates it for taking over there free time.
I think this shows how a upstart with the right ideas can go from nothing to one of the biggest things on the internet virtually overnight.

Reddit has created an environment where people have got together and used the power of number to change things, to catch criminals on may occasions and to promote people that they think deserve it. Yes as with any community there are the black sheep but for some reason i look at Reddit as being the father of the internet, he makes mistakes but does his best for his kids,.... like 4chan.
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- Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 6:53am
  
  Re: REDDIT
  Yup, Reddit is where Digg was a couple of years ago. Now look at Digg. Reddit? At some point, they will be there too. The only question will be if Facebook crashes down to MySpace levels faster.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Aug 2012 @ 5:18am

so, who else needs to be convinced that gatekeepers are no longer needed? we all know they're not, the world and his wife knows they're not, so i guess that just leaves the gatekeepers themselves and the politicians that are continuously bribed. shame how the latter are the ones that insist, more so even than the gatekeepers themselves, that the gatekeepers are still needed. i guess the bribing is a two-way street after all!
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weneedhelp (profile), 7 Aug 2012 @ 7:53am

Edit
On the main page the NASA video is under this article.
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Beech, 7 Aug 2012 @ 9:13am

Gates
"the old gatekeepers of culture are finding themselves without any gates to keep,"

I beg to differ. There are still gates, and the old are still there guarding thethem. The problem is that the barriers around the gate have fallen. Picture a gatehouse sitting alone in the middle of a field. To either side you see a bit of rubble, what used to be a great wall that is now destroyed. The guards in the gatehouse keep the drawbridge up and are very selective about who they allow through, but those they reject can easily walk around, so the job of the keeper is now largely to totally irrelevant.

So, the legacy industries still have a gate to keep. They can still choose who enters it, it just doesn't matter anymore.
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