Wayans betting Web comedy will sell

Damon Wayans is betting people will fire up their computers to watch videos about an African American leprechaun pimp, a thieving airport security guard and an adulterous Burger King.

Later this month, the comedian of “In Living Color” and “My Wife and Kids” fame plans to launch a website, WayOutTV.com, featuring videos produced by aspiring young comedians he handpicked. Wayans sees the free site as an online comedy club and production studio that could eventually change the way content is bought and sold in Hollywood.

He’s not the only one with that vision. And as others before him have discovered, it’s tough to change an entrenched industry like show business.

Wayans will be competing for eyeballs and advertising dollars with dozens of sites offering material produced by professional comedians, including Will Ferrell’s FunnyorDie.com, MyBlueCollar.com, which features the likes of Jeff Foxworthy, and MyDamnChannel.com, which contains content from Harry Shearer.

Those sites haven’t struck gold yet. It’s especially tough to attract visitors accustomed to visiting Google Inc.’s YouTube.

“We’re still looking for that big success story,” said Richard Hull, chief content officer for Blowtorch, a young adult-focused entertainment and media company.

Wayans and his advisors say their site will be different.

“People want our content because we’re dealing in funny,” Wayans said in an interview.

As younger viewers spend more time online and less time with television, online video sites have the potential to attract more advertising dollars. The transition is expected to get a boost from the Hollywood writers strike, which has slowed down the pace of new TV shows and pushed some writers to experiment more online. Research firm Emarketer estimates that spending on ads tied to online video will grow to $4.3 billion in the Untied States in 2011, from $1.4 billion in 2008.

“There’s a lot of initial attempts at these sites, but no one has dominated like the way Comedy Central dominates cable,” said Tim Chang, a principal at Norwest Venture partners, who has been informally advising Wayans and has been looking at WayOutTV as a potential investment. Wayans has an opportunity to pull ahead because “Damon is used to these skit formats; his strength is in putting out content quickly.”

In addition, many of the videos on sites such as YouTube are created by amateurs and aren’t that amusing, Chang says. He said Wayans would act as a “filter” to make sure WayOutTV’s videos pass muster.

The site also can attract more viewers than similar comedy sites such as RooftopComedy.com and Black201, which feature the work of professional producers and comedians but lack a well-known celebrity, Chang said.

“You need an established audience to kick-start the community,” he said.

Wayans said he was more involved than celebrities who merely contributed a few videos to a site or invested some of their own money but left the video creation to others. He expects WayOutTV to help find talented comedians and train them to write and produce their own vehicles. The goal is to sell that work to Hollywood.

“I’m there, overseeing this, working with the talent, nurturing them,” Wayans said.

He wants to help the talented comedians who haven’t yet “made it” produce professional-quality videos for a fraction of the cost it would take to create something for TV.

Cashing in on Web advertising is much tougher, at least for now, analysts said. For one, it’s difficult to keep viewers coming back to an entertainment site no matter how funny it is, said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research. Most people watch videos online because someone has sent them a link, he said, not because they’re browsing the many comedy sites out there.

And advertisers aren’t shelling out the kinds of big bucks for a Web video that they do for hit TV shows. McQuivey estimates that even Ferrell’s most popular online video, “The Landlord,” which got several million hits on Funnyordie.com, made the site tens of thousands of dollars at most (the company won’t say).

The sites are effective in allowing artists to act on their creative impulses and share that work with fans, “but as a money-making enterprise, these sites just don’t work,” McQuivey said.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see a lot more of them as investors swayed by the power of Hollywood bless the sites with venture money.

At a recent technology networking event in Los Angeles, Wayans showed off clips from the site on his laptop while surrounded by venture capitalists, publicists and others who might be in a position to help him.

“You come up with a new business plan, they say, ‘I’ve seen this before; you’re never going to make it,’ ” McQuivey said. “You show up with some celebrity cachet and suddenly everything changes.”

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alana.semuels@latimes.com