Comedy Central Rolls Out Plans for Life Beyond ‘South Park’

Take away its modest hit of yesterday (the British import “Absolutely Fabulous”) and its blockbuster of today (the cartoon phenomenon “South Park”), and how funny is Comedy Central? Executives at the cable network, formed in 1991 as a marriage between two rival all-comedy cable outlets, Ha! and the Comedy Channel, hope to make that question a little less rhetorical beginning Monday with a summerlong launch of original shows, billed as the most ambitious such move in the network’s history.

Debuting three new series, “Comedy Central Presents,” “The Man Show” and “Comedy Central’s vs.,” and new episodes of such existing shows as “Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist” and “Upright Citizens Brigade,” Comedy Central also tries to move beyond the notion that it’s still just a one-hit wonder--built on the back of a cartoon that began life as an underground video passed around Hollywood before then-Comedy Central President Doug Herzog put it on the air.

To be sure, “South Park’s” explosive popularity last year briefly distracted viewers from the image of Comedy Central as a place where mediocre movies like “PCU” and “The Scout” run in a continuous, Orwellian loop, interrupted every now and again by a “Saturday Night Live” rerun or a young stand-up comedians special from, say, 1992. Lending a bit of urgency to the need to broaden its base of original shows is the fact that “South Park’s” numbers are down 45% from a year ago, although the roughly 2.5 million viewers the cartoon averages still make it a hit by cable standards.

Fresh “South Park” episodes will run in June, a carrot to draw viewers to the new Monday-Thursday 10-11 p.m. schedule--a stab at those who don’t want the dramas and newsmagazines offered up at that hour by the broadcast networks.

But for all its advertising fanfare, the new lineup introduces a traditional Comedy Central mix of cheap-to-do game shows and a stand-up comedy showcase, as well as quirky series like “Strangers With Candy.” “Candy,” which has six episodes left in a 10-episode order, stars Amy Sedaris as a 46-year-old high school freshman/recovering alcoholic in a show that spoofs the pat morality plays of network after-school specials.

“As a niche comedy network, we feel our job here is to look at all formats, and really present to our audience a portfolio,” said Comedy Central programming chief Eileen Katz.

Still, of the shows set to debut this week, Comedy Central is putting its biggest hopes--and dollars, with 22 episodes ordered--behind “The Man Show,” (Wednesday nights at 10:30, following “South Park”). A collage of sketches, monologues and jiggling breasts, the show is organized around a kind of Maxim magazine-like premise that men just want to crack open a beer and watch women bounce on trampolines. It’s not a conceit that wears well, but it is reflected lately on other new cable series (FX’s “The X Show” and USA’s “Happy Hour”).

Once a pilot at ABC, “The Man Show” has nine writers and is co-hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla, the latter from MTV’s “Loveline.” Most importantly, it’s dressed up to appeal to Comedy Central’s target audience--males in urban centers, ages 25-34, according to Larry Divney, Comedy Central’s new president and CEO.

If that sounds awfully specific, it’s a reflection of the growing Balkanization of television, wherein cable networks aim programs at such a specific viewer there’s everything but a composite drawing in their press literature. Once upon a time, having an all-comedy cable channel seemed specific enough, but no longer--not with everyone from HBO to MTV to Lifetime doing original comedy programming.

Comedy Central’s niche may best be described as white males who, despite their real-life jobs, are still feeling nostalgic for the frat house. You can see this in “The Man Show” and in “Comedy Central’s vs.,” a game show in which opposites (for example, bikers vs. prison guards) match wits, answering questions in categories that drip with “Man Show”-like sexual innuendo and homophobic attitudes.

“A lot of their shows are for men that have had one too many lap dances,” a veteran female comedian says of Comedy Central.

Regardless, advertisers tend to pay higher rates to get those guys; in a recent report in the New York Observer, for instance, industry sources project a first-year $15 million increase in advertising revenue for CBS since the network replaced “The Late Late Show” host Tom Snyder with the younger Craig Kilborn.

Kilborn arrived at CBS via Comedy Central, where he helped define the network’s smug, white guy comedic bent as host of “The Daily Show.” Kilborn’s departure was also a measure of Comedy Central’s growth: In his place as “Daily Show” host, the network brought in Jon Stewart, paying him a reported $1.5 million a year.

“This network started 10 years ago and it’s probably been three different networks since then,” Divney said. In those 10 years, Comedy Central has gradually moved beyond acquisitions (movies, “SNL” reruns) and stand-up comedy shows, first gaining attention with cult hits like “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and “Kids in the Hall.” Though Comedy Central today says the ratio of original shows to acquisitions is 50-50, that figure is somewhat inflated, since it factors in, for instance, the several times a day “The Daily Show” airs.

Still, Divney, who succeeded Herzog as Comedy Central president in January, presides over a cable network available in 58 million homes, up from the 12.5 million homes of nearly a decade ago. Much of that has to do with “South Park,” which quintupled Comedy Central’s average viewing audience. The network responded by locking up the cartoon’s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, for an additional 40 episodes.

Asked about the downswing in viewership of late, “South Park” co-creator Stone said the publicity overkill last year attracted rubber-necking viewers but not necessarily fans. And he noted that “South Park’s” sporadic production schedule muddles publicity. Case in point: After the June run of originals, new “South Park” episodes won’t reappear until Oct. 27, with Stone and Parker finishing up and promoting their summer movie, “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.”

“The only word I can use to describe this show’s rise is ‘meteoric,’ ” Stone said of last year. “Every time we would unveil a new episode, we were going up a [rating] point or a point and a half. It would take NASA to figure out where it [would be] now if it had kept going like that.”