Play The Percentages

I ran across an interesting story last week. It’s about a lawyer who traveled over 200 days each year helping politicians get elected. Gross. Jon Macks worked as a consultant for more than 20 political campaigns. He handled debate preparation for the last five presidential campaigns. Politicians often use humor to demonstrate their humanity. Jon Macks was a joke writer before he even knew he was one. Macks was asked to help insert some humor into a speech that Senate candidate Paul Simon would deliver. Simon’s speech was a great success. Speechwriter and former press secretary for Robert Kennedy, Frank Mankiewicz told Macks that he should write jokes for a living. That was the turning point.

It was 1990, and Jay Leno was getting ready to take over The Tonight Show. At the time, Leno accepted joke submissions from freelancers. Macks decided to submit some jokes. Apparently, he made an impression because he was offered a 13-week staff writer position with The Tonight Show in 1992. What does a win look like for a staff writer on The Tonight Show? He wrote 100 jokes every day. If 4 jokes made it on-air, it was a huge win. Jay read 1,000 jokes per day and chose 25 for the monologue. What did Macks’ process look like? He found nine topics for each day and worked to create joke associations. He chased down the small, strange and oddball stories. Volume was the key. After a 22-year career with the Tonight Show, he wrote 500,000 jokes and 482,000 jokes ended up in a landfill. Based on the numbers, it is a 3.6% success rate. The seven Emmys and eighteen Academy Awards seem to tell a different story.