Q&A With Matt Tompkins

After Saturday Night Live, most people fall asleep. But for those who stay awake with their television on find themselves entranced by a weird, quirky sketch show that somehow encapsulates their life in in Nebraska. Omaha Live! creates sketches that apply almost exclusively to the Nebraska experience. Created by Matt and Ben Tompkins in 2011, Omaha Live! has thrived through six seasons while managing to keep its sketches new and exciting. Creator and producer Matt Tompkins explains the origins and process of producing Omaha Live! every week.

Q: How long have you worked in broadcasting?

Matt Tompkins: I started in December 2004 when I started my internship for Clear Channel Radio (now it’s iHeartMedia) and that was for a station called KFAB (which is an AM talk station) and I interned for three months before I got hired. Then I was promoted to producing the afternoon show for KFAB for about two years. Then in 2007 I started working with visual productions. Around that time my brother [Ben Tompkins] had gotten out of college. We were in the process of pitching a Sunday morning variety show, but then the afternoon guy got laid off, so we got put on that and created the Matt and Ben Show which we did for a little over four years. [After that] I got the opportunity to a syndicated radio show on Sirius XM with Otis Twelve.

Q: What was the inspiration behind Omaha Live!?

Matt Tompkins: Saturday Night Live is every comedian’s, every entertainer’s dream. It’s the dream gig. But percentages are against you getting on Saturday Night Live. And so that was always the dream of mine (like everybody else). I never took the leap when I was younger and moved away to the big city and did it. I would call it fate that led me stumbling into these opportunities that led me into radio and I felt that radio and T.V. functioned as my creative outlet, and if I had that I’d be content.

When we had the opportunity to make a T.V., [Ben and I] had made funny YouTube videos, we had built up the video production equipment we needed to make the show, but it was something so different, such a cool opportunity to do like if we could pull this off, with a minimal budget, with no studio, no actors (when we started). We just kind of built it to where it [is] today. You pull inspiration of Saturday Night Live, we pull from Flight of the Conchords (a musical comedy show), we pull from Adult Swim, which just opened the doors to being goofy and weird and a lot of our show (especially in the first season) was really goofy, really weird. We were very tongue and cheek like we know that were a low-budget local show with a wink and a nod. Our biggest inspiration was that if we can pull this off, if we can do this, let’s do something nobody else has done before.

Q:How did Omaha Live begin?

Matt Tompkins: [After] I left completely and was on my own, and I built a studio at my house. I was still working part time at KFAB. [But] we are working on the details of doing this T.V. show. Vic Richards was the promotions director when we did a pilot of the T.V. Show called Live Omaha! which is where the Omaha Live comes from. When [Richards] became general manager, he thought “well let’s take a chance on this idea”. So, a year and half later we started doing the T.V. show, and the rest is history.

Q: What is your process for creating in the show?

Matt Tompkins: When we started [with the T.V. show] we were lucky because Ben and I had literally thousands of skits to choose from. We had comedy albums. We were very lucky that we were not pulling from scratch. Now, our ideas come from a lot of different places. For me, stuff just kind of happens to me just during any point of the day.

All of our sketches start with an idea. Then we have a writers’ meeting where we pitch the idea, and we basically flush it out and we put together a beat sheet [a plot diagram]. Between that, you fill in the dialogue that structures your sketch. At the next writers’ meeting, you read the sketch aloud and make sure it is good.

Then, we do a final review of it. Eventually, it’s cast, we schedule it and we go out and film it. We go through a shot list, preplanning, and then its filmed. I then do all the editing at home. It sits on my computer for a week to a month, and then once its edited its done. The process can be quicker than that, but most of the time we like to take a nice, long process, at least a week or two before it goes on the air to truly flush it out.

Who are your viewers?

With a new rating system, we found that one, there are a lot more people watching than we thought, and two that it’s a much younger audience than we had thought. But there is also a spike in older people and it’s because those are the people who can’t leave the house. High school kids, college kids in dorms, that’s your younger demographic, and also senior citizens in their homes. A lot of people have stumbled upon it, and now DVR it. We definitely have a wide variety of viewers. When we had our premiere we had young people, college aged people, middle aged people, family people, and old people. I think when you’re doing a kind of weird, off center type of comedy, you attract all kinds of people.

What keeps the viewer coming back for more?

I think most people who watch it, the first time they see this they think what the h*** am I watching? It says its Omaha Live!, but it says it has a 48-hour delay (whatever that means). It’s obviously a local show. But most people tend to get into it. After a while, it’s like this cat with three legs, it’s an odd thing that your kind of like but don’t want it to leave. It’s very different and quirky. Eventually we catch them with a bit that they do like. Your [goal] as a show is that you want every bit to be funny, but really, you want people to remember and like the show. If you can make them laugh off the bat, that’s what keeps them with you.

Omaha Live! airs after Saturday Night Live at midnight on WOWT.