Jonathan Katz, Larry David, and Joel Hodgson walk into a room...
April 4, 2016 8:53 AM   Subscribe

Comedy Central turned 25 years old on April 1st. The AV Club commemorates the anniversary with an oral history of the network that brought us South Park, Jon Stewart as a serious pundit, and an ongoing revolution for women in comedy.
posted by Etrigan (35 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Paul Provenza is kind of our Captain Ahab. He’s always hunting for the elusive whale of comedy. He’s a purist who really believes in the art form and is very protective of it.

He's a funny standup but I'm still irked at him for what happened to Northern Exposure.
posted by jonmc at 8:58 AM on April 4, 2016


As obnoxious as his libertarian rantings have become over the years, I will still always have a positive association with Penn Gillette's voice, as it signified that another episode of MST3K was about to start.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:03 AM on April 4, 2016 [19 favorites]


As obnoxious as his libertarian rantings have become over the years, I will still always have a positive association with Penn Gillette's voice, as it signified that another episode of MST3K was about to start.

I share and affirm this statement. Whatever else he is, he's also the voice of Comedy Central's early era.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:08 AM on April 4, 2016 [7 favorites]


Ha!
posted by Melismata at 9:14 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]


Ha!

Yes, they're in there, too.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:26 AM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


This made me remember Small Doses - it was often paired with Short Attention Span Theater.

Check out this 5 min short from Small Doses, a recurring segment called "Food for Thought" from the show with an unbelievably young Patton Oswalt and Blaine Capatch.

IIRC, around 1994-95 or so, those two did a 'tonight's schedule' commercial spot for Comedy Central, and ended up getting a ton of very angry mail from MST3k fans, who misinterpreted their announcement that "Friday night is the best night for Mystery Science Theater 3000" in a southern rural (somewhat Texan, perhaps?) accent while playing with a toy dinosaur was a mocking jab at MST3k viewers as 'dumb hicks.' It was not intended to be interpreted as such, but I think I remember Patton Oswalt saying that for years afterward, long after those commercials stopped running (no doubt kept alive from fan's personal taped collections of the show), he would encounter people that still were offended about it.

I can just imagine the huge shitstorm in a teacup that would have been if it had happened in the last 10 years or so.

Incedentally, this site is reporting that Patton Oswalt is not only writing for the new crowd-funded return of the series, but is also going to play the son of TV's Frank.
posted by chambers at 9:38 AM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


...and an ongoing revolution for women in comedy.

It took years for their programming to try and treat women as a group with respect and for them to start paying attention to the pernicious sexism that plagues the industry.

Samantha Bee still had to leave the network to get her own show. Nikki Glaser was given a show instead. I'm sure it's no coincidence that Glaser's 15 years younger, blonder, is described as a "curious perv" on CC's website, and her show has a focus on sex. "Inside Amy Schumer" didn't happen until 2013. "Broad Street" in 2014.

Not a single woman standup comic was in the first season of "The Half Hour" in 2012. There were 2 in the second season (out of seventeen.) Three in the third (out of 14.) And three last season out of 14. Where the hell are the women?

They talk about "The Man Show" in the piece and they touch on its sexism, which was pretty blatant. The show had a lot of different kinds of segments. A mixed bag. But:
"The Man Show is particularly well known for its buxom female models, the Juggy Dance Squad, who would dance in themed, revealing costumes at the opening of every show, and in the aisles of the audience just before The Man Show went to commercial break and end the shows with the "Girls on Trampolines" segment."
Where exactly is their ongoing revolution for women in comedy?
posted by zarq at 9:42 AM on April 4, 2016 [13 favorites]


Where exactly is their ongoing revolution for women in comedy?

See also that only dudes are mentioned in this post.
posted by beerperson at 9:44 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


Lizz Winstead would probably take umbrage at being called a dude.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:49 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Probably not so much Amy Sedaris, though.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 9:50 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Lizz Winstead would probably take umbrage at being called a dude.

Your comment is the first time she is mentioned on this entire page. Including the post.
posted by zarq at 9:51 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Couple comments removed, please make the effort to not get in a needless snipe-off in here.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:02 AM on April 4, 2016 [2 favorites]


the other day i was trying to find an old "lounge lizards" routine and i could find lots of clips of the male comics who showed up there on the network's website, but weirdly the one i was looking for - maryellen hooper - has seemingly disappeared. they can't even promote the female comics they have managed to give space to over the years. they are very suddenly getting better, but it wasn't that way for a long time.
posted by nadawi at 10:03 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


Anyway... I was happy to see Dave Attell get a little interview time. One of the hallmarks of great comedians is nearly-pathological curiosity, which his show was about in spades.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:06 AM on April 4, 2016


It took years for their programming to try and treat women as a group with respect and for them to start paying attention to the pernicious sexism that plagues the industry.

And they are, is the thing. The Man Show isn't on anymore. Not Safe and Broad City (not Street) and Inside Amy Schmuer are on. Go ahead, dismiss them as just about sex or however else you want to relegate them to "Oh, that doesn't count...", but Comedy Central is putting more women in starring roles than at any point in its history. For a channel that started explicitly aimed at a male 18-34 demographic, that's a pretty far step forward.

See also that only dudes are mentioned in this post.

You might have forgotten that Jon Stewart's retirement was one of the biggest stories of 2015, but he was the face of Comedy Central for most of its history.
posted by Etrigan at 10:09 AM on April 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


ooh comedysplaining
posted by beerperson at 10:12 AM on April 4, 2016 [7 favorites]


Comedy Central is putting more women in starring roles than at any point in its history

And back when they showed stand-up, they broadcast female comedians like Paula Poundstone and Ellen DeGeneres. Particularly, long before Ellen became a household name.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:13 AM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


True, they made up for it with back-to-back Sinbad specials, but no one is perfect.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:14 AM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


them doing better now is great, but in a conversation about the history of the network, the history is going to come up, and they haven't always done great - even if they sometimes showcased comics who are women.
posted by nadawi at 10:20 AM on April 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


Not to mention Dr. Katz: Laura Kightlinger, Judy Tenuda, Janeane Garofalo, Joy Behar, Sarah Silverman, Margaret Cho, Margaret Smith, etc.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:20 AM on April 4, 2016 [6 favorites]


Lizz Winstead aside, reading this reminded me of how CC originally felt like a place for my kind of humor, but after piling on more aggressive content like The Man Show and Insomniac and Tough Crowd (and kinda South Park) on top of the more accessible but still sausage-party stuff like Dr. Katz and The Daily Show and Politically Incorrect, it did not feel like a place I was welcome or invested in. They did occasionally run half-hours by women comics, though it seems like it was mostly the same 2-3 comics and all of them skewed to a particular sort of style (on preview, yeah: Ellen Degeneres and Paula Poundstone and Laura Kightlinger, all of whom have been old since they were 12 somehow and were never threatening in a young-female-comic way).

90s and 2000s Comedy Central was one of the biggest contributors to "women aren't funny" in American culture, and it did real damage. The fact that a woman worked there occasionally does not invalidate the fact that probably more than 90% of the content there was created, produced, and performed by (almost entirely white) men, the primary testing demographic was men. CC more or less missed the alt-comedy bus entirely, seemingly because it wasn't Dude Comedy.

It's nice that they've finally figured out women have money. I assume it's not the same old guard running the place as there was then.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:22 AM on April 4, 2016 [17 favorites]


And they are, is the thing. The Man Show isn't on anymore. Not Safe and Broad City (not Street) and Inside Amy Schmuer are on. Go ahead, dismiss them as just about sex or however else you want to relegate them to "Oh, that doesn't count...", but Comedy Central is putting more women in starring roles than at any point in its history. For a channel that started explicitly aimed at a male 18-34 demographic, that's a pretty far step forward.

My point was that it is not an "ongoing revolution." It's only a very recent change which is not permeating programming throughout the network. Prior to this shift, the channel spent 20 years using women as a punchline or offering them "also starring" status way too often. Or in the case of The Man Show, objectifying and making fun of them. The vast majority of comedians whose standup routines were aired by the channel were men. "Schumer" and "Not Safe" and "Broad City" aside, most of their non-standup shows star and starred men.

Also, I did not say that Glaser's show "doesn't count" because it's about sex. Comparing Samantha Bee's show and Nikki Glaser's, the differences are notable.
posted by zarq at 10:26 AM on April 4, 2016 [5 favorites]


Lizz Winstead would probably take umbrage at being called a dude.

Right, Lizz Winstead, who left the hit Comedy Central show she created after the star speculated in a magazine interview if she'd give him a blowjob! I do wonder what she'd have to say about Comedy Central in the 90s and their attitude towards women.
posted by Krom Tatman at 10:28 AM on April 4, 2016 [13 favorites]


I do wonder what she'd have to say about Comedy Central in the 90s and their attitude towards women.

She is interviewed in the linked piece about her work on The Man Show, which came after she left TDS.

posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:35 AM on April 4, 2016


Oh right!

Winstead: I think those guys brought me in to see “How far can we actually go before you have a nervous breakdown?” I think I was the litmus test.

Sounds great!
posted by Krom Tatman at 10:38 AM on April 4, 2016 [8 favorites]


I remember that as being a time when there was always something worth watching on TV. Nickelodeon, HA, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network. Between one of those four, for a few years, someone always had you covered. Although now there are many more channels, I can't say that's true of the present day.

I think the worst choice Comedy Central ever made was switching out MST3K, essentially, for South Park, although it was redeemed later by putting Jon Stewart on Daily Show. Dropping their old roster of stand-up comics and classic comedy. I seem to remember first seeing Ernie Kovacs and Spike Jones at night, either on HA or Comedy Central, and since then, nowhere except YouTube. It's all a gigantic shame.

This article is great, entirely, but especially for this one line:
Hodgson: Short Attention Span Theater gave birth to the great Jon Stewart.

He remembered, and so do I. I don't think it was Jon Stewart's first show, but it existed, and I think it was an important stepping stone to the persona from the Daily Show. I think Short Attention Span Theater should come back. Maybe it'd be less hateful than Tosh.0, even it it ended up covering some of the same territory.
posted by JHarris at 11:28 AM on April 4, 2016 [6 favorites]


Having read more of it (there's a lot) --

Although it gives its nod to MST at the beginning, it still understates how much of the channel WAS Mystery Science Theater 3000 at the beginning. They rode that two hour length to fill time hard some days (there was a time when MST reruns were on the air every day before noon), but there was no shame doing that when it was the funniest thing on television. If they hadn't had MST3K then, they might not have survived to host Daily Show and South Park later.
posted by JHarris at 11:49 AM on April 4, 2016 [11 favorites]


I was a young girl who obsessively watched Comedy Central during the Man Show era, and uh. Yeah. It's not "ongoing," it's very sudden and abrupt, as other venues (definitely not Comedy Central) plowed ahead and showed that women in comedy could be successful and make $$$. It's almost insulting to me to hear anything about CC and women, when they did pretty much no work building that market previous to five seconds ago.

Though if we're making tickmarks for women, there was also Strangers with Candy.

I do really miss it being an actual comedy channel. My boyfriend, who didn't watch CC, always marvels that there was a time when comedy qua comedy was made so accessible.
posted by stoneandstar at 1:40 PM on April 4, 2016 [4 favorites]


Comedy Central throwing MST3K away is up there with WB throwing Angel away.
posted by Pope Guilty at 1:42 PM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


As a non-US-ian, which US tv channels/shows did give women a comedy platform whilst CC didn't (or didn't much, or only in a sexist way, or ... well, whatever)?
posted by MacD at 4:44 PM on April 4, 2016


None of them in particular; CC was just utterly unremarkable in terms of female representation. It reflected the times in terms of gender and did nothing groundbreaking for women.
posted by stoneandstar at 4:47 PM on April 4, 2016


I worked at the Comedy Channel. My favorite experience was the big, no-extravagence-spared opening party at the 23rd Street studio. There were drunk comedians all over the place, and Milton Berle came walking in, and was immediately swarmed over by these young comedy people. I remember being high up on some structure looking down on the seething mob around Berle, and getting a kind of chill at this vision of the torch being passed to a new more historically conscious and self-aware comedy generation. And I really can't stand Uncle Miltie.
posted by Modest House at 5:44 PM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'll always remember Night After Night and Allan Havey for lots of great bits — very few of which are available on YouTube, sadly. The biggest thing though, and the reason I'll never forget him, was the show of the night of 22 May 1992, the night Johnny Carson retired. Night After Night put up a static shot of Havey's dimly lit desk with a lit candle on it. Superimposed over it were the words, "We're watching Johnny's last show, and so should you be," or something to that effect. For the whole half-hour.
posted by ob1quixote at 6:17 PM on April 4, 2016 [3 favorites]


Don't forget about Idiotsitter! That and Broad City are the two best comedies on TV right now.
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:38 PM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


(which I forgot mention is also starring two women)
posted by LizBoBiz at 8:40 PM on April 4, 2016 [1 favorite]


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