“We got 55 hits from NASA,” says a delighted Macio, relaying how he recently figured out how to track IP addresses that visit his website. For almost a year, the Brooklyn comedian has been developing a television show, “Confessions of an Addicted Mind,” and the show has slowly built itself into a cult hit on the Internet. But if ever there were evidence of the show’s potential mass appeal, Macio needn’t look any further than its popularity among America’s biggest eggheads.

The concept of the show is simple. Macio interviews ordinary people about their addictions, after which he reenacts one of the more off-the-wall stories that best displays his subjects’ character flaw. The tagline of the show says that “no addiction is too small or too extreme…from picking your nose to picking the wrong relationship.” And that is evident in the pilot episode, where we meet a midget who is only interested in tall women, a woman who loves the rush of urinating in public and a man who, like Sir Mix-A-Lot before him, loves big butts.

And more are on the way. Macio has received hundreds of e-mails, voice mails and even a few video tapes of people begging to confess their addictions to him and to entertain the world. And he has lined up a few well-known personalities to reveal their innermost secrets as well. Radio hosts Opie & Anthony, comedians Jim Norton, Patrice Oneal, former “Saturday Night Live” star Tracy Morgan and even actress Whoopi Goldberg have told Macio that they will stand in front of a camera and speak about their deepest and darkest, all for the pleasure of the viewing public.

“Me being nice to everyone is finally paying off years later,” jokes Macio.

The comedian developed the idea for the show after visiting his cousin, a drug counselor, and sat in the back of the room while reformed junkies reeled off one depraved story after another, recounting their lowest moments while falling into hysterical fits of laughter. “They were telling these horrific stories, and they were smiling,” said Macio, who asked how they could have such good humor about the worst events of their lives. When one man explained that laughing at themselves was one of the best forms of therapy, the idea for the show was born, though Macio considered this specific subject matter a little too depressing to be accessible to the world at large.

Macio tweaked the concept, filmed the pilot and then organized focus groups both in the City and during a tour stop in Amsterdam. After receiving overwhelmingly positive feedback, the comedian decided it was time to shop the show to major networks. Both HBO and Comedy Central expressed interest, said Macio, but neither network seemed to really grasp the concept of the show. Comedy Central, for example, wanted to place the show entirely within the Motherload section of its website, a space usually reserved for rerun clips of shows that air on the network.

Rather than relegate the show to second-tier status, Macio decided to just do things on his own. He created a website, clipped the pilot into a trailer and hosted the full show on iTunes. He then hit the streets, printing flyers to hand out after stand-up performances, hijacking public computers in Apple stores to run the trailer for an unsuspecting public and asking friends to tell other friends about the show.  After months of guerilla marketing, over 1 million people have viewed Macio’s pilot since June, and major brand sponsors are looking to get in on the action. Having never marketed anything before, this success is quite an achievement for the comedian.

“This was like a crash course in Marketing 101,” said Macio, who handles every aspect of the show with help only from his wife, Gina. “We’re updating the website everyday. When sponsors came to me, I had to create a media kit from scratch. This is all new to me.” The guerilla marketing acumen displayed by Macio has caught the eye of some. Local Apple stores have asked him to do several seminars on the show’s development, and other budding entertainment types have reached out to him for tips.

Macio hopes to help usher in a new age of entertainment, in part by changing the way people are entertained. He and his wife have come up with an unofficial slogan for the show, “killing cable the way cable killed the networks,” recalling how cable television destroyed the monopoly a handful of major networks once had over what the public saw. “The Internet is where people can go to see what you can’t see on television,” said Macio. He adds that major networks so far have been unable to figure out how to make real money through the Internet, with their only idea so far being to charge a nominal fee to watch reruns of popular shows. “If the networks came to me now and asked for the show, I’d be in a better position. I’d be able to do what I wanted to do. The web has helped me do that. I want to be the small guy on the totem pole that helps pioneer this.”

Still, the heart of the show is not its marketing success story, but its stunning ability to get people to open up, evident in the planned topics scheduled for future episodes. Macio recently interviewed one 65 year-old Italian man who is addicted to gangsta rap, and must constantly endure arguments and criticism from his family over his untraditional choice of music. Professional choreographer Darrin Henson has confessed behind-the-scenes tales of former clients Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera and their erratic dancing ability. And one well-known comedian and former drug dealer also spoke at length to Macio about his old celebrity client list and their penchant for cocaine, a confession so shocking that he later asked Macio not to use the clip for fear that his career might be destroyed.

“We have it on tape, and he was dropping names in graphic detail,” said Macio, who has decided to protect his friend rather than expose his viewers to this nugget of comedy gold. “It would be a great segment, but I can’t use it.” But the comedian, who has sunk everything he has into the show’s development, is sure that will not be the last time he will hear such a crazy story, at least as long as he’s rolling tape.

As Macio notes, “People, when they get in front of a camera, they just start confessing everything.” 

“Confessions of an Addicted Mind” is available free exclusively through iTunes. For more information visit Macio’s website, www.MacioTV.com.