@midnight is about to redefine the meaning of live tv.
The late night game show is heading to Austin, Texas for SXSW (that’s ‘south- by- southwest’ for those of you trying to figure out what the X stands for). Didn’t get tickets to the giant music/ tech/ pop culture festival? Take heart- @midnight will perform an episode and live stream it over Periscope.
Entertainment Weekly reports the live stream will kick off the festivities tonight at 9 pm. The episode will feature some @midnight favorites like Doug Benson and Arden Myrin. Chris Cubas, winner of the #PointsMe challenge wherein an @midnight fan got to compete on the show will also be in the episode. Cubas, an Austin native, competed on a 2015 episode with Steve Agee and Thomas Lennon.
Periscope launched in March of 2015. The app allows users to live stream themselves not just to their followers, but worldwide (think twitter, but with video). There have been previous experiments with marrying the app with TV, like the recent Oscar live stream by Saturday Night Live star Vanessa Bayer for Kohl’s (sure, why not). In the ever increasing partnership between social media and television, a live episode on Periscope seems natural, especially for the internet saturated @midnight that regularly builds games off of comical posts on the world wide web.
SXSW is also a game platform for the experiment. The festival always has live musical performances, panels, and screenings. This year President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama will even be giving keynote speeches on civic engagement in tech and girls’ education respectively, Fortune reports. In the past several years, it’s been a growing source of pop culture news and previews. For example, last year’s festival premiered the now smash hit Mr. Robot, launching early buzz and critical acclaim.
@midnight is in its third season on Comedy Central. Host Chris Hardwick is probably most known for the mega- popular Walking Dead after show Talking Dead, but as fans know, his real comedic abilities shine on @midnight.
Hardwick is the perfect person to host the first ever episode of television on Periscope. He used to host Web Soup (think The Soup but with Youtube clips) and created the website nerdist.com, which regularly reports on all things nerdy and pop culture- related and hosts a slew of podcasts.