Joe Alani lounges in a three-person beach chair with the waves rolling in the background. Live on air he definitively, yet somewhat sarcastically, states that he is “revolutionizing the entire surf world… obviously.” And jokes aside, he’s not wrong. Joe is the host of The Couch Surfing Show – surfing’s newest live broadcast/podcast/talk show. Joe, along with his brother Noah and colleague Omar Gadahn, are looking to alter the concept of what it means to consume live surfing content. Instead of the traditional competition format broadcast, they’re bringing live streaming straight to the free surfs at your local Southern California beach.
The show elevates the daily banter heard in a surf parking lot to the big screen, analyzing rides, sharing morning coffees with local surfers, and leveraging their decades of experience in the surf industry to bring on big names. Just eight months since their first episode launched, they’ve already hosted influential personas like Mason Ho, Kolohe Andino, Ryan Sheckler, Matt Biolos, and Tanner Gudauskas, to name a few.
Their lean, three-man team and mobile production set up means they are flexible and adaptable. They can fit all their equipment in the back of a pickup truck – or on three e-bikes down to Lowers – and run the show wherever the waves are best. The end result is a casual, unfiltered conversation that brings out the true personalities of some of the surfing world’s most colorful characters. We gave the three masterminds behind the concept a call to hear the story of the self-proclaimed “greatest live surf show ever created” – how they started, how it’s going, and where they’re headed.
How did The Couch Surfing Show come to be?
Omar: Last summer I was watching Twitch and all the IRL (in real life) streamers. If you don’t know what that is, it’s people that have a backpack with internet connection and they walk around cities filming themselves for hours. I was watching some of that stuff and was blown away that these guys had super stable internet connections pretty much anywhere. That led me to look into how that was possible and what’s involved in doing that. There are a lot of really expensive professional solutions, and then there’s some ad hoc solutions that you can kind of DIY. So I made one of those. Joe and Noah come from the surf world – they’ve been part of the industry for 20 years and have tons of connections. Their passion really lies there, so we joined the two things together.
We started by filming some warm up sessions at the US Open last year. We did it with …Lost, streaming it to their Instagram. We kind of did a combination of the IRL but something more elevated where we had a little switcher and a couple of angles. The idea was born out of that. That wasn’t Couch Surfing yet, but Joe was on the mic, Noah was filming, and I was switching. We then streamed the first round of the US Open, but the WSL shut us down. We did get about three heats.
Joe: The only reason we even did that is that they weren’t having a stream that day. If they had a stream we wouldn’t have done it. We thought, let’s have some fun with it and stream it. But I mean at the same time, Volcom and everyone on the beach was streaming live on their Instagram, but I think ours just looked too legit.
Omar: Around Christmas last year we were thinking that we should do something again. We talked about it and developed the idea of the show together. The key thing that I remember from that is we had to take this thing seriously. If we just go down there and see what happens, not committing to doing a bunch of episodes, it’ll just fizzle. So we branded the show, we developed the look and the feel, we talked out what the format would be, and really figured out what we think would work on the show.
Did you imagine the show would be a marketing tool for your production company, or are you hoping it can become its own revenue source?
Joe: At this point it’s become its own thing. Right now it’s not a moneymaker for the business, but there’s definitely a buzz. You can tell there’s something special there, something different. Now we’re thinking in the long run that it could be some kind of revenue stream. I think it’s shown people that there can be a different format and a different formula to live streaming surfing. Before it’s just been the contest. And that’s the way it is. And there’s no thinking outside the box because it’s such a standard.
Was there anything you took inspiration from?
Noah: One of our influences was lot lizard culture – just sitting, drinking a cup of coffee while watching everyone surf. We love that. We just love surfing really.
Omar: That idea also puts the guests that come on to the show at ease. They’re just hanging out, seeing what happens, and talking. That’s something that everybody that comes on that show is already doing every day when they go to the beach. They feel really comfortable, not like it’s something you’re forced to do.
Joe: I listen to podcasts and I watch all the WSL events religiously, so all those have influences on us and a lot of it’s a mesh. And Omar has a lot of influences outside of the surf world. But our style is not an interrogation. It’s just kind of what surfers do – half of them are in the water and the other half are usually sitting on the beach drinking coffee talking about what’s going on in the water. We just capture that via live stream.
How much of the programming and guests are spontaneous versus planned in advance? How do you choose who’s going to be on the show?
Joe: We try to book the guests in advance, but it’s a lot of last second work. We’ll have a day or two warning just because of the nature of it. So many things have to come together. First, you have to wrangle two pro surfers to come in, which is always hard, then the waves have to be decent. But that’s also what’s great about doing the show on the beach. We’ve had random guests that we had no idea we’re going to be on the show that day, but they are down at the beach and we put them on the couch. So I think that’s another X factor that our show has that no other show has. But for the most part we try to have two guests booked before the show starts and we try to feature some locals. Obviously we want the biggest, most interesting guests, so we aim high and sometimes people don’t respond or say no, but thus far I’ve been amazed at the guest list we’ve been able to get.
Who has been your favorite guest so far?
Joe: For me it was the Chris Ward/Cory Lopez episode just because those were two of my heroes growing up. To get both those guys in the same place at the same time is a feat in itself. For me that was the funniest episode. Though there have been lots of great ones – Matt Archbold, Mason Ho, Matt Biolos, etc.
Noah: We did have a breakthrough episode one day. We got invited down to one of Kolohe’s and Brett Simpson’s scrimmages. All the top guys were there just surfing down at the pier. That was a big one for us.
Omar: A huge thank you to Brett and Kolohe for including us because once people saw them on there, it gave a lot of legitimacy to the show.
How does it work on the technical side? Do you guys have a generator? Are you plugging into power?
Omar: It’s all battery power. Around five hours is our limit at the moment. But there are a lot of things we could do to extend that if we had to. We’ve done events with full legit streams that were eight hours. For those we’ll run a generator. Overall, we’re not using a lot of power for what you’re seeing.
Noah: Everything fits in the back of a truck. When we go to Lowers we get everything down there on three e-bikes. It’s not that much stuff.
Joe: That’s really the genius of what Omar figured out – to easily do a live broadcast. Sometimes we have multiple camera angles and replay. That’s usually a six-man team with all types of computers and gear. Omar’s figured out a way to shrink a quality broadcast where we come down, pop it up, and are in and out of there in four hours. I imagine more people would have done this if it was technically easy, but it’s extremely hard.
Has the growth of the channel met your expectations?
Omar: I spent a lot of time looking at that stuff. I would say, initially, it has exceeded our expectations. It’s still a grind, but the responses to the show are amazing. Our Instagram is at 17,000 followers, which I’ve been impressed with because Instagram is pretty hard to grow organically. YouTube’s always harder. That’s where we’re trying to direct people. We are at 6,000 subscribers on there, which is still a small account, but it feels pretty good. We’re pretty stoked on it.
How big do you need to get it to be a success?
Omar: For it to be a full time job you have to be in the hundreds of thousands of followers and even then your videos have to be doing good too. Right now we’re pretty psyched on doing it and just growing it. We just want more people to watch it. That’s the main thing.
Who is the audience so far? Who is the target audience that you guys want to reach?
Joe: We want people who love to surf and watch surfing tuning in. Those are usually the most passionate people. If you look at the analytics, it’s all ages – teenage kids all the way up to their parents are watching. I definitely think we hit a note with a lot of age ranges.
Do you have any upcoming guests or plans for future episodes that you can share?
Joe: Like we said, a lot of it’s last second. It depends on the swells coming. My dream and goal is to get it in some world-class waves. If you’ve watched the show, we really haven’t had good waves yet and it’s already a success. I could imagine going somewhere world class with world-class surfers. It would be off the charts to me. That’s where I want to get it eventually.
Have there been any grumpy surfers getting angry about live streaming the conditions?
Joe: I’m sure there are a couple, but for the most part we go to places that already at a minimum have two or three Surfline cameras live recording 24 hours. Plus we always make sure that we have a local featured and we don’t advertise that we’re going live. We’re not showing up to any secret spots by any means.
Omar: We’re a news channel. It’s not like we’re covering global politics or anything like that. We’re covering surf, but other than checking out the surf cams on Surfline, there’s no other way to get live reporting on surf conditions at any given time. So I think that’s a pretty big part of our show too. Even though it’s not always front and center, it’s what we are. We’re developing that aspect of our show more and more. We have East Coast correspondents reporting on the conditions over there, too. It’s a 12-year-old kid, but it’s still pretty cool.
