User:Baeksu/Never Not Funny

Never Not Funny is a weekly podcast hosted by comedian Jimmy Pardo since Spring 2006. He and producer Matt Belknap have appear in every episode. Past anchor Mike Schmidt appeared for all of season one, except for episode 60 when his departure was announced. Since March 2008, the show moved to a commercial format, with the first twenty minutes of each show remaining available to non-paying subscribers.

Show Format
The show consists of free conversation between Jimmy Pardo, Matt Belknap and a third, weekly-changing guest comedian. Topics discussed range from music and popular culture to personal life and amusing or interesting anecdotes.

Even though using comedy bits is discouraged, several long-running jokes have evolved during the seasons. These include discussing people's appearances, using an amusing phrase as a name for a fictional band, quoting song lyrics, purposely mangling names, and saying "We don't edit, jerk!" after a particularly poor joke or section.

Season 1
The original idea was to do an audio podcast version of Jimmy's Los Angeles show "Running Your Trap". The first episode featured him and Matt Belknap as "The Producer".

Pat Francis was scheduled for Episode 2, but when he was unavailable, Mike Schmidt (usually referred to by Pardo as "the former third basemen" after the similarly named baseball player) took the third chair. This became the arrangement for the show for the first season.

Every fourth episode would have a guest such as Pat Francis or Graham Elwood. Midway through the first season the theme song was changed from a generic rhythmic tune to "Mad at the World" by Daver, with sound bites mixed into the song.

This three man setup lasted sixty episodes, including a clip show, and two live shows recorded at the UCB Theater in Los Angeles. The show went through little change throughout the first season until episode sixty, when Jimmy announced that his relationship to Mike Schmidt had become strained through the years and that they had decided to go their separate ways; Mike left the show in an attempt to reconcile their friendship.

Mike explained the situation on May 25, 2007, on his blog. In March of 2008 Mike started his own half hour solo podcast named The Forty Year Old Boy.

Season 2
The season began with a new introduction clip featuring sound bites from Jimmy, Matt, Danielle Koenig, and guest Paul Gilmartin, as well as a new logo for the podcast.

Pat Francis was the guest for the first episode (201) and returned for episodes 205, 209, 213, 215, 217, 220, 221, 230, and 236 as part of the ensemble in the live recording of Jimmy's show "Running your Trap", 229 for the "Christmas Episode", and 230 making him by far the most common guest for season two.

On episode 217, Matt Belknap announced plans for a new video podcast called Jimmy Cam, though at the time it was unclear whether such plans would be realized.

On Episode 233 Jimmy and Matt announced a sponsorship by a lingerie web site; despite both having confessed a general dislike of lingerie. During the short-lived sponsorship the podcast had contests for the site.

Season 3
During episode 239 (the 99th episode overall), it was announced that season 3 would start with the 101st episode.

It was also announced that from the beginning of season 3, subscribers would have to pay to continue receiving the complete podcast, although the first twenty minutes of each episode would still be available for free.

The subscription price was set to US$19.99 for 26 episodes. Also mentioned was that JimmyCam (segments of video from the show) would be a feature of the new season, with a suggestion that 5 of these five-minute segments would be available each week). The video is recorded by Andrew Koenig, and the clips are available at the www.monkeygolucky.com site

Awards

 * Never Not Funny was nominated for a 2007 Podcast Award in the Comedy category.
 * Never Not Funny was nominated for a 2006 Weblog Award.
 * Never Not Funny was made one of iTunes' "Best in 2006" and "Best in 2007" podcasts.