Word: channeler
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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WHEN COMEDY CENTRAL was born in 1991, the result of a merger between HBO's Comedy Channel and MTV Network's HA!, it was a cable network in search of an identity. Its mix of anonymous stand-up comics telling jokes about gender wars over toothpaste caps, reruns of old sitcoms like McHale's Navy, and a smattering of new programs (like Sports Monster, an unfunny spoof of sports wrap-up shows) was hardly exciting. Comedy Central should have been hip and edgy--a Seattle to the broadcast networks' Des Moines. Instead it fell Grainbelt flat...
Comedy Central's latest find is Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist (Sundays, 10 p.m. E.S.T.). The animated sitcom debuted with six episodes last summer and became the channel's second highest-rated show (behind Politically Incorrect). Now it has returned for a 13-week run, providing an imaginative departure from the sea of indistinguishable sitcoms on the networks this fall...
...Comedy Central's new president, will have to stay one step ahead. He's on the lookout for someone to replace Maher as "the face of Comedy Central" and hopes to launch three new series next year. Herzog also wants to rejuvenate that tired staple, stand-up comedy. The channel has attracted big-name comics like Whoopi Goldberg and Gary Shandling for upcoming specials, but Herzog is also looking for a way to showcase new talent that won't be "a guy telling jokes in front of a brick wall at Giggles in Cincinnati." If he can do that, Comedy...
...News president plans to launch a 24-hour news channel early in 1997 that its president, Roone Arledge, today claimed would be an alternative, rather than a challenger, to CNN. "It will be very difficult for ABC to put a dent in CNN's penetration because CNN has been around for so long," says senior media writer Richard Zoglin. "The fact that they have more than 200 affiliate stations will give them a leg up with local coverage, but the head start that Turner has may be insurmountable." ABC will seek to distribute the all-news programming using both cable...
...controversy has created a hot little industry. Ray Santilli, the Englishman who is peddling the footage, says it has been seen in 32 countries. Britain's Channel Four aired a documentary on the subject. In the U.S. an hour-long show called Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction? has become a staple of Fox TV--the X-Files network--and has been among the top 25 sellers in video stores. Before the end of the year, the tape will be offered in 35 catalogs, including the Publishers Clearing House mailings...