Club Med Inspires New Comedy Software That May Change Entertainment Industry

New patent pending software product designed to evaluate and accurately quantify positive audience response in a variety of applications.

Santa Rosa, CA, (PRWEB) October 23, 2003 -- What does Club Med have to do with improvements in the comedy industry? Their business quality improvement goals (including those for the comedy performers on site) inspired a new software product from Steve Roye designed to tell comedians exactly how good they really are.

Roye, author of the Killer Stand-up Comedy System and developer of the new software called Comedy Evaluator Pro, explains how the software came into existence.

"I was asked to do some consulting work for Club Med. They have a great interest in quality improvement. That includes improving the quality of the performances given by the on site entertainers they employ. But like any big business, they also wanted to know how I could quantify progress made from my consulting involvement. Immediately, I realized that there was no real objective, quantifiable gauge or benchmark that I could use to do this. Businesses make decisions based on numbers, not on how the organization "feels"about the project. They also want to be able to measure the results of any decision made that affects the business in real numbers. Comedy Evaluator Pro came into existence from those realizations."

The software is designed to be used with recordings of live comedy shows. Primarily, the software is used to automatically document the time spent by the audience reacting to the comedy performer on stage, called Positive Audience Response (PAR).

The concept behind the software is deceptively simple. There are two events that occur when a comedy performer is on stage: the performer talks or the audience reacts. Each of these events is objectively measurable and can provide the numbers needed to determine the percentage of the performers act that results in PAR (i.e., laughing, cheering and applause).

The Comedy Evaluator Pro software not only automates the measurement of PAR, but also provides a minute-by-minute calculation of the amount of PAR in a performers act.

"The evaluation of 'funny' has been a subjective affair until now", says Roye. "This software only evaluates results - easily quantifiable results. For example, we evaluated five randomly selected minutes of Bill Cosby's act. He had a PAR of 58. That means that almost 60% of the time he was on stage, he was generating tremendous PAR."

The first version of the software is scheduled for launch in October 2003 and is geared towards performers. However, other versions of the software for agents, booking professionals, TV executives and movie producers are in development now.

"Soon, an agent or booker will be able to ask for the performer's PAR before they even accept a promo package from the performer" explains Roye. "It is a definitive screening tool that requires no special knowledge of comedy. So an assistant could easily do the necessary objective evaluation of a comedy performer as a pre-screening tool."

Movie producers will be able to use a version of the software, in addition to focus groups, to determine objectively how well the audience as a whole responds to the movie product and know exactly which parts of the movie need to be revised for greater impact. TV advertisers will be able to measure response to commercials that use humor to gain the audience's attention. It's a quantifiable way to determine bottom line results without subjective intervention.

An application of this new software for medical laughter research is also near completion.

Roye has already implemented the Comedy Evaluator Pro software into an experimental program he is currently working on now called "Make Money In Comedy In 90 Days."

A patent is pending for Comedy Pro Software and its numerous applications.

ComedyProSoftware.com is a division of Comedy University, a well established organization with global clients dedicated to product research, development and marketing in the field of comedy entertainment and presentations incorporating humor.

For further details or a demonstration, visit the main corporate website at http://www.comedyuniversity.com, the product website at http://www.comedyprosoftware.com, or call 800-734-1409.