Monday night planning sessions for On Tap are by far one of my favorite times of the week. What started out as a weekly logistics meeting to plan guests and write questions has slowly evolved into something that is part steering committee, part writers’ room, part true confessional. If ever I were to describe something as a “safe space,” it would be Studio B on Monday evenings from nine until one of us had to go to bed.
At the beginning, Tap meetings had almost a mystical reputation among the RCM staff. Nobody else had ever done them, or at least not on a consistent basis and certainly not for as long as we ended up doing them. Allegedly, the gatherings were secret, with no one outside of the main panel allowed. Very inside jokes referenced in front of the other staff and community members induced giggle fits and had the others convinced we were speaking to one another in code. A quip Killer made about us using planning meetings for secret cabals was interpreted and spread as gospel truth. In essence, for the first few months after our show’s premiere, the three of us were the Illuminati of RCM.
In a way, the rumors weren’t that terribly far from the truth. No, Tap meetings weren’t a ruse for the eventual takeover of RCM, but they did help model the kind of planning and teamwork necessary for a show – and, if one extrapolated on the idea, a network – to create and maintain production standards a lot higher than one would expect for a group with little experience and no budget. Structure and consistency was the one thing RivalCast most desperately needed if we wanted to survive, and somebody had to show how it could work. Tap meetings, from the onset, were part of a wider initiative to model the hows of beating the odds and becoming successful.
As the show evolved, so too did the nature of our meetings. Yes, we do still discuss plans for potential guests and work out scheduling puzzles. Yes, we do still spend a fair chunk of our time working on questions that are both interesting and relevant to the kind of guests we want to attract (people who have never worked on panel shows might be surprised at the number of potential questions which get tossed, either because they’re relevant but not interesting enough, or very interesting but don’t fit the tone we’re trying to set). But a lot of time is spent brainstorming other ideas, too – for example, just because a particular question doesn’t fit the stringent criteria for inclusion in the Magic Hat doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a fabulous question for a one-on-one interview with someone. Likewise, we’ve jotted down countless ideas for potential skits which wouldn’t work well for On Tap, but do work as ideas for video shorts or, if nothing else, ideas for the RCM fiction series. It’s interesting to look back on the chronicles of the fictional versions of the RCM staff and remember how many of those plotlines and jokes came about as a direct result of the sidebar conversations of our Tap meetings.
What I enjoy most, though, is knowing that we set a standard that is helping change RCM for the better. It showed you can have people spread far apart but still unite behind a common goal. It showed that you can bring differing ideas and opinions together and meld them into something uniquely yours without the project falling apart. It proved that we didn’t need shock value or gimmicks to stand out and make viewers want to watch, and that you didn’t need to try to force yourself into a pre-established mold of what a “good” show should be. “Good” shows are the ones that have chemistry, the ones where everyone is involved in their own way and the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. Audiences respond to shows that are authentic and show the personalities of the people hosting; otherwise, you have talking heads griping at each other or faking mirth and falling into the abyss of mediocrity. We are better than that. What we found, and what we showed, was that to build a successful show, you just need to communicate with your team, know each other inside and out, play to each other’s strengths and compensate where we find weaknesses.
In other words, you need to trust each other and have fun.
And that is the best part of Tap Time.
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