‘South Park’ Creators Agree to 30 More Episodes, New Series

Fans of Comedy Central’s “South Park” will get 30 new episodes of the animated show, and fans of “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone will get a new series from the duo in 2001, Comedy Central announced Monday.

By the end of the three-year deal, Parker said, he and Stone will have 102 episodes of “South Park” under their belts, at which point the slapstick adventures of Kyle, Kenny, Cartman and Stan will come to an end. But the series will live on via the syndication market, as Comedy Central also announced a partnership with Parker and Stone to package and sell old episodes of “South Park” to others.

Parker, meanwhile, declined to give specifics about the new series in the works for the comedy cable channel, saying only that it will be a live-action show rather than an animated series. Though Parker and Stone are hot enough names to draw interest from broadcast networks, Parker said the freedom to do edgier comedy is what’s keeping them in the cable universe.

“We learned a big lesson doing ‘South Park,’ the movie,” Parker said, referring to the animated feature that came out last year from Paramount Pictures. “It was so hard, like pulling teeth to get anything done.”

By contrast, Parker and Stone were able to scramble and work the federal government’s recent raid in Miami to seize Elian Gonzalez into an episode last week.

Parker and Stone are signed to produce 10 episodes of “South Park” per year. Though still a hit by Comedy Central’s standards, the series has seen its popularity trail off since debuting in August 1997. At its peak two years ago, “South Park” drew some 6 million viewers. But the new season, which began April 5, has been bringing in between 2.5 million and 3 million viewers.

“When it was at 6 [million viewers], that’s because there were 2 million people watching because we were on the cover of every magazine,” Parker said. “That was 2 million people watching who didn’t get it.”