Well-funded, big-studio-backed comedy-video Web sites have taken more hits than they've made. Does anyone have a plan that's not a joke?
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The Comedy Don: "Super Deluxe had great goals," says comic Eugene Mirman, "but the goals were never realized." | photo by Matt Hoyle
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A Child Shall Lead Us
One comedy site has succeeded -- by embracing its inner niche. CollegeHumor was founded by two high-school friends as a way to share humorous stuff with each other when they were at different schools, and the site hasn't strayed too far from its original intent or startup ethos, despite current ownership by IAC. (IAC purchased a 51% stake in CollegeHumor's parent company, Connected Ventures LLC, for an estimated $20 million in August 2006.) It has 12 people in the video department creating almost everything in-house for a fraction of what the other sites fritter away on production deals. It also eagerly plays with other Web sites, distributing its content to YouTube and MySpace after a one- to two-week exclusivity period on CollegeHumor. That runs counter to the way the other sites have worked, and, like a lot of the strategy employed at CollegeHumor, that's the point.
"I don't want to seem like an ageist, but I started doing this when I was 19," says Sam Reich, director of original content. "I'm 24 now. The average age here is 24, and we have a different sense of what will be popular than an executive, especially a TV executive." The site has attracted advertisers such as Motorola, Fox, and Subaru and reaped $4.2 million in ad revenue during the first quarter of this year. CollegeHumor is profitable -- the only profitable major comedy-video site.When it comes to Internet comedy, entertainment-industry inexperience is nothing to laugh at.
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