It’s Time to Dismantle Comedy Central

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I came to a strange realization this week. With Stewart and Colbert on hiatus, and South Park shelved until whenever it decides to rear its head again for a few more episodes, Comedy Central, without those staples, is a truly awful channel. So bad in fact, that I think it’s time to dissolve the station once and for all, and let its few shining pieces move on to bigger and better channels where they can find wider audiences.

When you look at Comedy Central’s daily slate of programming, it’s been more or less the same for the better part of a decade.

A million different stand-up specials, with only one of every ten or twenty actually being funny.

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I must give Comedy Central credit for trying to discover new comedians, but the fact remains that it’s like finding a grain of sand in the ocean, as the majority of the time, the comics just are not funny. The ones that are mildly funny are put on track to possibly get their own show in the future, which as we’ll discuss later, has turned out to be a good idea once, ever.

Reruns of Scrubs, because there is literally no other network comedy the channel can license.

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I’m not a TV executive, so I don’t know how licensing rights work, but Scrubs literally seems to be the only comedy the channel has been able to get the rights to. If the show had Seinfeld, Friends, The Simpsons, Family Guy or any reruns like that, it would be much better filler to watch throughout the day. I enjoyed Scrubs on Comedy Central when I watched the entire series in a year since it was on six times a day, but that was three years ago and they’re still playing the same shit every day.

Reruns of MadTV because they lost the rights to Saturday Night Live.

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This was a big blow to the channel when they lost SNL. I thought SNL moved over to E!, but I don’t even see it there anymore. MadTV is complete and utter shit, and an hour long time slot of quality programming is a big deal to lose for a channel that’s 95% filler.

A few comedy movies, but usually really terrible ones.

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It’s stunning how bad some of the comedies that are played on Comedy Central are. What do we have on today? Let’s see, Loose Cannons AND Police Academy 2! Well, hot damn! In fact, the funniest movies you will EVER find on the channel are of the Grandma’s Boy, Beerfest range, and I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen anything like Zoolander or The 40-Year Old Virgin on the channel.

Reruns or new airings of a “Comedy Central Original” show, where a random comedian is given a half an hour to do whatever the hell they want.

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Lewis Black, Demetri Martin, Jeff Dunham and even Carlos Mencia can be funny in five or ten minute chunks, but when they’re given an entire show to fill, that’s where things start getting ugly. By giving these comedians their own shows, Comedy Central is desperately trying to replicate the success of Chapelle’s Show, their golden goose that went crazy and ran away to Africa. But the fact remains is that not one of these shows has worked besides that one.

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What did the Dave Chappelle say to the Comedy Central? SLAP!”

So it’s clear that many of the problems with the channel are licensing issues, which are not easy to overcome. This causes them to have lackluster filler throughout the day making it a channel no one wants to watch. Their “original” programming is at night, but outside of a few select gems, has been overwhelmingly full of crap for years now.

So, what to do?

The licensing issues are likely insurmountable, and unless they can rope in truly great classic comedies, both for TV and movies, the filler part of the day is shot. And for original shows, they’re days of shaking the tree of stand-up comedy and hoping a fist-sized diamond falls out of it is getting old. This is why I believe the channel needs to be torn apart and sold for parts.

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Give him a network.

The channel’s shining stars are too bright to be held down by an otherwise shitty channel. Stewart and Colbert as a tag team would be better than Leno, Letterman, Conan and Kilbourne combined, and any network would be lucky to have them. Sure, they might have to tone down some of their most risqué stuff, but that’s never been WHY the shows have been so brilliant, and an hour long slot on a major network would be a great way to expand the shows audience, and give the man who has been voted the most trusted journalist in America (Stewart) a platform to win the hearts and minds of mainstream America.

South Park is a different case, and is a bit harder to place. I would lean toward Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network which is already chock full of mature cartoons where South Park would feel right at home. Another path could be HBO, where Matt and Trey would at last finally find themselves fully unleashed to push the envelope as far as it can go. The last time that happened? We got Bigger, Longer and Uncut. Imagine that kind of freedom on a weekly basis.

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I think South Park is the show that fits best with the channel Comedy Central SHOULD be.

I believe all of this is probably a moot point, as channels themselves become less and less relevant in the future. Soon, shows will exist independently of channels, as your TV will be one giant OnDemand menu hooked up to the internet. But until the rest of the world figures that out, I say kill Comedy Central, and let the wind scatter its seeds among the earth.

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9 Comments

  1. Only issue with Stewart and Colbert moving to a network channel, they’d no longer be able to target that same network’s news programs for the stupid stuff they say.

    I only watch Comedy Central for Stewart/Colbert or if they’re showing Futurama reruns, as long as they keep showing those I’ll keep watching those, oh and Gabriel Iglacias whenever he’s on.

  2. I think the channel could be fixed but it would take some work.

    One thing i would like to see them do that may go over huge is see about showing some of the comedy from other english speaking countries, or translated comedy from non speaking ones.

    There are some real funny shows out there that most people do not get exposed to (Little Brittan, The IT crowd, No Heroics, etc..)

    This could fill some of the slots currently filled with bad stand up.

    As for the stand up, Cut out the crap stuff. They can reduce the stand up to 20% of what they show and only put up the ones that are good.

  3. I just read that re-runs of It’s Always Sunny are going to start on Comedy Central in 2010. You can add that to Scrubs on the short list of awesome shows.

  4. @mitEj: I agree with you on shows from across the pond for the most part. Spaced could be rerun pretty easily, and would be a good fit. However, I recently watched several episodes of The IT Crowd, and I don’t find it that funny. There are some funny bits, but it is a little too slapstick for its own good. I would expect comedy about IT to be more cerebral, and they went the other way with it. When they do smart jokes, it is fairly funny, though.

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