Online With No Bosses and No Rules: It’s The Anthony Cumia Show

“Instead of just having the studio I was able to take the cameras outside. One of the first few shows I did was with Andrew Dice Clay and I popped a couple of cameras outside by the pool and we were up by the table and it was really relaxed,” Cumia says. “It had an old Hugh Hefner feel to it by the pool. I have a bar in my house so you just pop the cameras out there and you’re sitting with a guest at the bar having a few drinks, a little bartender girl behind the bar. The whole house has become pretty much my set.”

Cumia runs wired connections when filming in different parts of his house, since he has easy access to the TriCaster from any location, but he’s thinking about creating wireless connections in the future—perhaps for shots in the hot tub, he says.

Creating a Show Worth Paying For

While Anthony Cumia didn’t have to upgrade his technology to turn his online video hobby into a profession, he did have to improve his show. His early Live From the Compound efforts were casual. If he was going to charge his fans, he needed to offer a professional product.

“It was more just a hobby, an afterthought. If I was having a party and a bunch of drunks were singing karaoke in my basement I’d fire up the cameras and take requests from the viewers, things like that. Kind of on a whim get some people in the studio and goof around without any real preparation involved,” Cumia says. “Now, it’s a daily show, Monday through Thursday, 4 p.m. Eastern. I have the time to prep every day, pull video off of the internet that I want to use on the show and comment on, put it into the TriCaster. There’s a lot more preparation. It’s more structured. I’m able to pre-plan and do a little more preparation for this show which, I think, makes it a lot better.”

In his 20 years in radio, there’s one thing Cumia hasn’t done before now: work alone. He’s always had someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to keep the show moving from segment to segment. On The Opie and Anthony Show, Cumia was the one doing Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston impressions, while Hughes steered the show and took callers.

Now that he’s on his own, Cumia has to provide both the structure and the humor. It’s all been part of the learning process.

“It felt a little awkward in the beginning,” Cumia says. “Opie had always been the radio guy so when we would be doing the program with Jim Norton it was Opie that pretty much drove us from segment to segment and subject to subject. It was a little awkward for me to even get into how I would change the subject. I could go on for hours rambling about one thing. But I started getting more comfortable with looking into the camera and addressing the audience and talking about things as if they were the other person in the studio. It took some getting used to. And I’m always trying to improve the show and grow, so it’s still a learning process, especially coming from radio with somebody else and going to a visual medium solo for the most part, but I really like it. It gives me the ability to really control the show, every aspect of the show.”

Learning how to transition topics and keep his energy up without a cohost are challenges Cumia has mastered on his own. More difficult is getting guests to his home studio. For much of his radio career he worked in Manhattan. Getting guests to drop by and promote a project or just hang out wasn’t difficult. Now, he’s working from his Long Island home. Some comedian friends have dropped by the new show, but celebrities are in short supply.

“It’s not as easy as if I was in New York City, that’s for sure. Keith, my producer, he’s been pretty good with getting people out there. We supply transportation and it’s not crazy. It’s not like it’s way upstate New York or out on Montauk. I mean I’m right into Nassau County on Long Island, just past Queens. It’s not that bad,” Cumia says. “We already have been talking about getting some type of space in New York City so that when we do have a guest that can’t make it out to Long Island we can go into the city and get set up pretty quick with a green screen, camera, the TriCaster, and a couple of lights. That’s an option we’re looking into.”

In the weeks between Cumia’s termination and the debut of The Anthony Cumia Show, fans wondered what the new show would feel like and whether or not they would have to pay for it. Since The Opie and Anthony Show was on SiriusXM, fans were used to paying $14.99 per month for a subscription. Many were hoping the new show would be free and ad-supported. After all, Joe Rogan and Adam Carolla are enjoying success with free ad-supported shows. Fans could see Cumia taking the same path.

Even so, Cumia decided to charge subscription fees: $6.95 per month, $32.95 for 6 months, or $59.95 per year. It was a gamble, since so much online entertainment is free.

“Since I had built this studio over the course of the years and invested a lot in it, I wanted it to be subscriber-based but I didn’t want it to be very expensive. It was definitely going to be less expensive than SiriusXM,” Cumia says. “It seemed to me that I was going to be able to break the mold and be successful doing a subscriber-based show because I did have that built-in audience already.

“That’s another reason why I wanted to get up and running quickly—strike while the iron was hot kind of a thing. And it worked. I think it is a viable model, but not for everybody. I think you do need to come from some place where you already have that built-in audience that’s willing to put up a few bucks.”

While the show has sponsors, it doesn’t rely on them. Cumia knows advertisers disappear when there’s controversy, and he wants a show free from bosses or corporate masters. He plans to present sponsors in a fun way, and if the talk gets too hot and they need to leave, that won’t impact the show.

Thanks to his devoted fan base, Cumia was on solid ground financially from the start, making more from his new show than he had at SiriusXM. At the time of this interview he had more than 40,000 paid subscribers. Even after staff salaries and expenses, he’s making a comfortable living. It’s something he’d hoped for but didn’t expect.

“It was surprising. I don’t think entertainers, for the most part, are the most confident people. It’s scary moving from a sure thing to something that rests on your own shoulders and is very iffy,” Cumia says. “I was excepting much more of an uphill battle. I’m very happy with the way things worked out.”

This article appears in the November/December 2014 issue of Streaming Media magazine as "Online With No Bosses and No Rules: It’s The Anthony Cumia Show."

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