Comedy Central serves up a uniquely American brand
of humor. What is your strategy for selling the channel to a global audience?

Bill Roedy: With 135 channels, we are the largest collection of channels in the world: MTV is the biggest, with an audience of about 1.5 billion, and Nickelodeon is right behind that. Our strategy from day one has been local, local, local. We pioneered that strategy. In the past couple of years, we decided to apply it to Comedy Central.

Over the past 24 months we’ve taken it to where it is now. We have 150 million households worldwide and seven websites. The aim is to take it everywhere. I’d like to see the Comedy Central brand as powerful as MTV globally. Our key strategy is to go local, but Doug and his team have come up with shows that travel. We can take those shows and put them with formats of other shows and combine that with local programming. We have the infrastructure worldwide with MTV and Nickelodeon, so we are able to expand fairly quickly. The idea is to have a portfolio of brands that brings in the adult demographic and combine that with MTV and Nickelodeon—then we have all the demographics covered.

Humor is such a culturally specific thing. How do you create programming that will, as Bill says, travel?

Doug Herzog: We are always trying to create something that is funny for the Comedy Central audience. Traditionally, this stuff did not travel particularly well. Yet we found that over the years, American comedy, and particularly the Comedy Central brand of comedy, has started to travel a little bit. Certainly animation—because you can redub it—travels a little better. But some of the more specific stuff is gaining an audience too, like Jon Stewart and The Daily Show or Dave Chappelle, things like that. As large and as far-flung as the world is, it is getting smaller every day. People have access to things they did not have access to before and, consequently, roads are built.

Roedy: The key thing for us that makes a product travel is language. When you can dub in different languages, that helps. When you have shows packaged locally with local management, that addresses some of the burden. The real key is to tap into local production. That is what we have done with all the other channels. As for those shows that do travel—South Park for example—we’ve used them on MTV until we gain a following. South Park has been very successful on MTV. And many of these shows have been very successful on a syndicated basis. That supports the Comedy Central brand and makes it easier to launch a channel.

So you develop specific shows for specific markets, for instance shows that offer Polish or German humor to those specific audiences. Do you also look for a common ground above that level?

Herzog: We are not at that stage at Comedy Central domestic. But we keep our eyes open for opportunities, and MTV Networks has a global presence. It certainly is not lost on us at Comedy Central that landing on something that would play across the world would be a real bonus.

Roedy: With regard to programming that we produce in the States for international broadcast, we’ve done some of that with MTV and a lot with Nickelodeon. Long term, we will do it with Comedy Central, too. It makes for some interesting combinations.

Comedy Central has become required viewing during the Bush years with Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Will that political commentary model translate into locally produced programming?

Roedy: What really works for The Daily Show is, obviously, Jon Stewart. Finding a Jon Stewart in local markets around the globe would require hitting a real home run. That said, the strategy is to do just that: take a local personality and provide political commentary. There’s not a lot of that actually; it’s a void around the world. It’s been in the UK for some time, but in other countries, it really hasn’t developed. We decided to do it in Germany, but in a much smaller way. We have a personality there that we are testing in just five-minute clips in which he provides commentary on the politics of Germany.

You are both American. When you look globally for opportunities in comedy programming and you review shows produced locally in other countries, can you see the humor, or do you have to rely on the locals to say, "Oh, that’s really funny!"?

Roedy: Although I’ve lived outside the States longer than I’ve lived here, I rely heavily on local management. Over the past 20 years, we’ve built up an incredible array of talent. Indians manage our channels in India; Chinese manage our Mandarin channels. They are tapped in completely to the local culture, including comedy, which makes for a very interesting collaboration.

Is there also a global market for Spike TV, MTV’s channel that specifically targets male viewers?

Herzog: Oh God, we certainly think so. We haven’t had an opportunity to spend a lot of time on it yet, but the idea of a network devoted to men should, theoretically, work everywhere.

So testosterone transcends world cultures . . .

Roedy: I don’t think Americans have an exclusive on that.

Herzog: Comedy Central is 15 years old, and Spike, by comparison, is still in its infancy. We certainly have some work to do on it here domestically, but I think we are on our way to a big idea. And as this company has always done, we would like to think it has applications beyond the U.S. at some point.

Roedy: The key to this strategy is that the formats we use internationally largely originated in the States. The Comedy Central idea, as well as MTV and Nickelodeon, all began in the U.S., and now they are successful around the world. It establishes the brand, it establishes an on-air look and it establishes the product that, in many cases, can travel. And, if it doesn’t travel, we can still use the format. Because Comedy Central has been so successful in the United States, it becomes easier to make it a success globally.

How many markets are you in now?

Roedy: We’re in nine. We launched Poland in October. In Germany, we acquired a group of channels a year ago; there were four music channels and we converted one to comedy. We now have terrific distribution in Germany with 33 million households. We launched Holland in April 2007, Italy in 2004, the UK in 1995 and Spain in 1999.

As for Comedy Central’s growth in the United States, have you reached your sweet spot, or do you see continued expansion?

Herzog: We certainly hope we haven’t peaked. No, we think there’s a lot of upside in Comedy Central. We’ve got a little wind at our backs with five successive quarters of growth. This looks to be our biggest year in terms of ratings overall. We’ve got Jon Stewart and Colbert, which have solidified our late night. Prime time remains one of the biggest opportunities. You can never have enough hits—The Sarah Silverman Program and Little Bush being two of our latest. We are going to continue to build and keep up the momentum.

With regard to Stewart, Colbert and Little Bush, are you afraid of a ratings drop once Bush leaves office?

Herzog: No. Jon Stewart started on The Daily Show in 1999, and he spent several years going after Bill Clinton. His show wasn’t any less funny then. Bush has been good for comedy, there’s no question about that. But I don’t think it all goes away when he leaves. I do think The Daily Show and Colbert have opened up the category of political comedy. That category was seen as somewhat narrow previously. I think they have mainstreamed it to a large degree. No matter who ends up in the White House, they will have to deal with Stephen and Jon.

Roedy: I can remember that same question being asked to the Saturday Night Live people with Gerald Ford or Johnny Carson with Ronald Reagan. There’s always somebody.

Are there markets where you say, "We’re just not going there. There is absolutely no appreciation of humor there?"

Roedy: I’ve never seen a country that doesn’t laugh. The key is to capture the local sensibility. As long as you do that, there isn’t any country where you can’t launch comedy. And conversely, there isn’t any country where you cannot add something as well.