The Fat Jew Loses His Comedy Central Deal Because of Plagiarism Backlash

Comedy Central was never some small, undersized player loaded with a deep comedic integrity.

CC began as merger between two comedy channels, Ha! and CTV. And IRRC, neither its predecessors nor its early incarnation was anywhere close to 24 hour programming of stand up clips when it started, because that would have been awesome.

At the time I think both MTV and VH1 were still the most consistent bet for catching televised standup, each with a handful of 30 minute standup bit clip shows. And at that time both of those channels, each better placed than CC or its pre-merger entities, also were heavy on regular, actual music video programming.

Instead early CC was heavy on the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and similarly bargain-basement-budget rerun programming. Maybe I'm mixing their schedule up with Nickelodeon, but I seem to remember lots of Mr. Ed reruns on CC. They'd occasionally splurge for some movie in the ballpark of "Police Academy 8: The Return of We Still Owe A Lot To Some Very Nasty People Who Launder Money Through Steve Guttenberg."

Integrity only comes into play indirectly, when it interferes with actual profits. Fat Jew got his deal because he was demonstrating a regular ability to bring in $6k-per-mention ad figures, but the market demonstrated that he was unable to maintain that revenue long enough to make it a worthy investment.

Anyway point is that the company was formed by a merger, has always been driven by profitability, and always will. They didn't start out innocent and get corrupted by corporate; they were built by corporate. Comedy Central exists because of a handful of law firms' Merger and Acquisitions departments.

/r/StandUpComedy Thread Parent Link - complex.com