Comedy Central has announced a contract extension for South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone that has an unprecedented feature: Parker and Stone will share ad revenues from digital exploitation of both South Park and new material 50-50 with the network.
For Comedy Central to do this is particularly bold. Comedy Central is a subsidiary of Viacom, which has taken a very hard position on digital distribution through YouTube and others. It has actively squelched the distribution of The Daily Show, Colbert Report, South Park and other potentially viral clips. By making this rev-share deal and establishing a digital creative studio for Parker and Stone to run during the 6 months a year that they are not producing South Park (which started, if you recall, as a viral video Christmas card that was dubbed from VHS to VHS back in the dark ages of the mid-90’s), Comedy Central is making a significant wager on the amount of ad revenue that can be generated with professional short-form video content and also hoping that their digital efforts may incubate programming for the network.
Joining funnyordie.com and 60Frames (and, we’re sure, a host of upcoming 2007 announcements), the professionalization of digital video is officially in gear.
Matt Rosenberg
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media morphing
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Strategists & Planners
Comments (2)
check out this post on Digital Axle interactive marketing about how Comedy Central is taking lessons learned in kindergarten seriously.
Posted by Ana | August 28, 2007 4:03 PM
Posted on August 28, 2007 16:03
it will be interesting to see how this mad scramble for professionally-produced short-form content shakes out...as a former network television exec-turned-filmmaker, i began developing "convergence" programming over three years ago, and received blank stares from my colleagues (who derisively laughed they'd NEVER write, produce or direct for a screen smaller than a TV) and reps (who arrogantly insisted there would NEVER be a serious market for short-form video programming outside the viewers of MTV). at last, the marketing and financial benefits have become too attractive to ignore. the storytelling potential still has its obvious limitations, but tiny gems sparkle, too, and i trust the truly inventive will be inspired by the inherent challenges and figure out how to mine them.
Posted by alexandra leh | August 29, 2007 1:44 AM
Posted on August 29, 2007 01:44