#47 How Art Bell Created Comedy Central

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:15

All right, Michael, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You get the show going each and every week. And this week, again, is no exception. no exception. You pulled out all the stops for Episode 47. Save some for next week. Am I right? All right.

Well, welcome everybody. This is Episode 47 of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show. So excited to have you. I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. And we've got an amazing show for you today. Oh my gosh, do we have an amazing show? Art Bell is here. That's right. Art Bell, former media executive and author. He wrote the book constant comedy how I started Comedy Central and lost my sense of humor. What Jeff, you got the guy who started Comedy Central on your show? Yes, I do. And we're going to talk about the birth of that amazing channel, which by the way, as its 30th anniversary this Wednesday, April 1, 2021. Talk about timing. The guy who invented the channel 30th anniversary. It's like everything's coming together. Can't wait to share my interview with Art Bell with you in just a few minutes.

Last week's episode was amazing with Jennifer candy. If you haven't listened to that episode yet. Check that out. Right after listening to my interview with Art Bell. You'll love it. We talked a lot about John candy and Jennifer Candy's amazing career. It's a must listen. Special thanks to Jason Taylor, the 3 geeks podcast for introducing me to Jennifer, I can't thank you enough. Also, you may have seen me this past week live on Twitch with Scott Curtis at the behind the bits talk show tons of fun with Scott Curtis. I think now technically I'm a regular. I've been on that show so much. So that's fine. Follow him. And also if you're into the live thing, don't forget I got crossing the streams. The live show I host every Wednesday at 9:30pm. Eastern time we talk about great TV shows you should be streaming we got a great cast that talks through a bunch of great shows. Every week. We go live on Facebook and YouTube. Follow us on youtube at the Jeff Dwoskin show channel and you'll be alerted every time we go live. It's super fun, engaging interactive. This past week. Actually, we were talking about justice league. A lot of us saw that movie. We talked about the Justice League. Oh my goodness. All right. What? Who's calling I I apologize. Hang on one second. Hello?

Ozzy (Impersonator) 2:33

Oh, hello, Jeff. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Listen, I was listening to your talk about the Justice thing. Oh, great. CGI.

Did you see Oh, Jackie was Jeff Do you notice how Jocko was so darn beautiful talk it was you know, Prince of Darkness. Who I've been my whole life.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:52

Yeah, I can see how you could relate to that. Did you see the Joss Wheadon version the original version

Ozzy (Impersonator) 2:59

2017. Over to what he wouldn't is good because they didn't have as much it wasn't as dog. Hey, you know,

Jeff Dwoskin 3:05

why don't you explain the movie to everyone who's listening? who maybe didn't see it?

Ozzy (Impersonator) 3:10

Oh, yeah. So basically you have all these characters he's got to go get gather because there's just this this guy Steppenwolf, right who is who was banned in the 70s A we used to have some series bangers against and they all they are going out to find his dark side right because he's got to bring these boxes and mommy boxes to him and then once they get the mommy boxes then they Oh big lies he's on a team up so you got to have like the Batman now you got to have your Superman is gonna come back and everything and then basically it's done real dark and you're gonna hold team together to go to go fight everybody. And you know it was unfortunately Stephen both died man wasn't ready for that. He's all he's super dead. Like his head took his horn off and everything man is that wasn't very rock and roll.

Jeff Dwoskin 3:54

Who's your favorite character in the movie? So many superheroes

Ozzy (Impersonator) 3:57

on quite a mix on that, you know, because it's good characters. Like I'm partial to bat. Right But he didn't actually like take anybody's heads off. I mean, there were a few times there were some flying things that were pretty cool. No, I would you recommend the movie to anyone who wants to see it? Definitely man if you like black if you like darkness, and like darkness and if you like the prince of darkness and it's just heavy in his lightning with with a flash cap play visor mirror is good, too. You know, they just really well done is a whole lot of points of light. You know, dirty evil live as a murderer. Really good. Really good. Really?

Jeff Dwoskin 4:36

glad you liked it. Well, thanks for calling in. I really do appreciate it.

Ozzy (Impersonator) 4:39

Hey, I can't wait to rock and roll.

Jeff Dwoskin 4:44

All right, bye. All right. Well, you never know who's gonna call in to live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show no matter how many times I change the phone number. All right on to the next thing.

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Well, I'm excited to talk to Art Bell about the 30th anniversary of Comedy Central the channel he started. I am also excited about the upcoming 50th episode of live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show, it's gonna be a big one. I got a huge guest prepared, it's gonna be amazing. Maybe we'll do some promotions around it. I did just send out the personalized signed books from Jackie the joke man to the three winners from that contest. That's right follow at Jeff Dwoskin show on Twitter and on Instagram. We do giveaways love my fans love my listeners. We do lots of fun stuff for you here.

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Guess what time it is. It's time for me to share my conversation with our bell with you. You're gonna love it. And here you go please and gentlemen, I am so excited to introduce you to my next guest. He invented the greatest cable channel of all time and we're going to talk about it Comedy Central Art Bell is with us we're going to talk about his memoir constant comedy how I started Comedy Central and lost my sense of humor. It's an amazing read, and we're gonna dive into some awesome stories from it. I want to welcome to the show art bow Hello, Ark.

Art Bell 8:44

Hello, Jeff. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Dwoskin 8:46

Oh, it's a pleasure to have you here a couple of things just off the bat before we get into the whole comedy central thing you spent some time at U of M at CES right? Yeah,

Art Bell 8:54

are you U of M guy?

Jeff Dwoskin 8:56

half my money goes there. My daughter

Art Bell 8:58

goes she's probably having a great time. Well actually not not this semester.

Jeff Dwoskin 9:02

She's managing it's getting a little a little normal great place great school year I studied U of M economics there. That's it That's important because it eventually ties you to how you got your job at HBO. Exactly. You were a mood Moodle, Moodle the Taylor model the Taylor Okay, your Motel the Taylor and Fiddler on the Roof. That's the reason I bring that up. Well, I want to hear all about it. But my Hebrew name is Tevya, Tuveya is really how it's pronounced and Fiddler on the Roof. But that's my, my Hebrew name is after the main character in Fiddler on the Roof. So when I read that I always it's always makes me think of that it's to ever see the show. I think I have seen it once or at least I've seen the movie I think I don't know if I've ever seen the play. Yeah, but it's something that I definitely want to so so you have a performance background.

Art Bell 9:49

Yes, minor performance background. I feel lucky that I got the opportunity to do some performing and some comedy onstage and stuff very

Jeff Dwoskin 9:56

cool. The Economics. That's what ties you to Your eventual job at HBO, where you brought your brainchild of the comedy channel, which became comedy central to life, you join them in the very interesting field of economic modeling.

Art Bell 10:13

That wasn't my plan for getting into the entertainment business. But it certainly was my entree because I was working at CBS at the time. And I found it incredibly stifling was like the post office of the entertainment world. It was just layers of management and nothing really interesting going on. I wanted to be close to the product, a friend of mine called from HBO, and this was the mid 80s. And he said, You got to come over here. It's unbelievable. Everybody is so excited about the television we're creating here. I said, great. You know, can I get a job? He goes, Yeah, well, the reason I'm calling is they're looking for someone who can do econometric forecasting, because they need someone to forecast subscribers. And he says, I think you're the only one I've ever met in the entertainment business who has any background in that? I said, Yeah, I could do that. So I went over got the job. And despite the fact that I The last thing I wanted to do at HBO was econometric forecasting. That's what I did. And I was happy to be there. And I figured, okay, and now I'm at least close to a really interesting product. HBO was doing fabulous things in those days.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:12

Yeah, home box office. I think back in those days, they had that cool opening with the city where it was panning the city. Oh, yeah. You remember that? Still the greatest HBO opening ever

Art Bell 11:21

and widely, widely imitated since? Yeah, I have to say, I've seen that that kind of thing. So many times. It's

Jeff Dwoskin 11:27

such a classic. So you went from CBS to HBO, you're doing all the economic modeling all that fun stuff? Well, they made me think that probably will spark a lot of people going, huh, there's alternate ways to get into places. I mean, you went from economic modeling to running in creating a channel,

Art Bell 11:43

it's an important thing to consider for anybody who's looking to get into any industry, you don't have to walk in there based on knowing exactly what they're doing. You walk in there with a bunch of skills and talents, whatever they are, they may need that. And if they do take the opportunity, I knew I didn't want to do econometric forecasting forever, or even any kind of analytical work forever. I had been a consultant in Washington DC for three years. And I decided I wanted to get out of that. So again, it didn't exactly light my fire to go to HBO and do that. But I said, Okay, I'll do as good a job as I can. And you know, maybe I'll get a better job out of it closer programming or comedy, or whatever I want to do.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:19

So when did the idea of the comedy channel kind of creep into your head? And what was the sort of the pathway to get other people on board? Get some stakeholders involved?

Art Bell 12:29

That's a big question. I will tell you that I went to Wharton Business School after Washington, DC where I was economist and asked when I got there. I said, you know, I'm interested in television and the arts and stuff like that. Any people like that around or their clubs are something he said no. However, they do the Wharton follies, which is a musical comedy review. So I went down to the meeting. And sure enough, there's all these people who had been, you know, professionals on Broadway professional performers, writers. Suddenly, I found like all my friends at Wharton, we put on the show the first year, second year, I wrote the entire show. And I was in it both years. It reminded me how much I love comedy, how much I love to write comedy. And it was very successful in that I thought it was funny. And I got a lot of good feedback on it. When I came out of Wharton, I wanted to get a job in the television business. I said, Why is there no comedy, no work? It just seemed like a giant hole in the market. There's music, there's a ESPN Sports Network. There's news networks, all kinds of, you know, single focus networks. There was no comedy network, and I just completely baffled me. So I kept that in the back of my mind. And not only did I do that, I thought about what it would be and why it would be and what would it look like and this ruminated, you know i ruminate about this four years from the time I get out of business school through the time I pitched it, HBO when I was at CBS, I knew I couldn't pitch it because like nobody would care. They didn't want to hear from the junior guys about anything. But when I got to HBO, I started talking about it a little bit. Nothing really happened. And then one day I said you know what, this is ridiculous. I really should talk to somebody seriously about this. And the project I had been working on when South it was canceled, basically so I had nothing to do and they weren't gonna fire me said, you know, stick around. We like you. We'll figure something out. But you know, for the meantime, you're on the bench. So I made an appointment with Bridget Potter who was the head of HBO programming, you know, kind of legendary in the business. You gotta remember HBO was was what Netflix is now is the biggest thing going right still pretty big. Obviously. She was the head of programming and people considered her genius. I mean, so I was scared. But I put myself together. I went into her office, got my courage together. And I said, Bridget, I think HBO should start an all comedy network, you know, 24 seven comedy, I think she said, Stop right there. That is the worst idea I've ever heard. And let me tell you why. First of all, there's too much comedy on television already. Secondly, who wants to watch 24 hours of comedy? And third, what comedian is going to be on that channel? You think Whoopi Goldberg is going to want no, you think Robin Williams is going to be known? Do you think any of these really a list comedians are going to be on this channel? Absolutely not. They would never consider it. Thanks for coming. You don't know much about television, but it seemed like a nice fella see around the cafeteria, and I left. And I was, as you can imagine, kind of devastated. But not for long, not for long. I really thought almost immediately as I walked out of there that she was wrong, there needed to be a comedy channel in the world. And if HBO was going to do it, I'd have to take it somewhere else. And I started putting together a proposal putting finances and here's what the programming looks like. And here's how you market it. And here's, here's my vision for it, basically. And I thought I'd staple that to my resume and send it out, get a new job, see if we wanted to do it. I think back on that, how crazy of leaving a good job in hopes of doing that. But I was serious about the comedy network. And then one day as I'm working on this, because I had nothing else to do, my boss's boss walked by I said, What are you doing? You don't have anything to do. And I said, I'm working on this idea I had, he took a look at it. And he said, Wow, this is really cool comedy network. He says, I think Michael Fuchs, the chairman of HBO should see this. I say, great, you know, that'd be terrific. He says, Let's go and I said, What right now? And he said, Yeah, right now we're going to go down to Michael's office. I know Michael will get in, we'll talk to him about it. Now. You got to imagine me junior person at the at the company. If I ever got into the elevator with Michael Fuchs. Accidentally, I would break into a cold sweat. This guy had just been declared the most powerful man in Hollywood by the New York Times Magazine pictures on the cover, he was kind of a scary guy. Meanwhile, we're waltzing into his office, I have no presentation materials. I've had about 30 seconds to think about what I was going to say. I sat down and pitched him. I did it with a lot of passion. I really kind of shared my vision for what the channel should be. And I think I got to him when I said, if this thing is successful, it could be the center of the comedy universe. And I think that would be great. And Michael, who loved comedy said, Yeah, that would be great. He said, let's give it a try.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:47

That's awesome. I feel like we're Bridgette missed the concept was no one's gonna watch a comedy station. 24. Seven. That's true. But I mean, but the beauty of a comedy station 24. Seven, is that when you need it, it's there.

Art Bell 17:01

Yes. No one was more surprised that she brought that up. Objection than me. Cuz Of course, I wasn't assuming anybody would stare at the top the channel for that long. But there were single subject channels there. And I thought that comedy deserve one.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:15

Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so Michael Fuchs, the most powerful man in the world?

Art Bell 17:20

Well, they said Hollywood, they might have

Jeff Dwoskin 17:23

a man in Hollywood, you have them in the palm of your hand?

Art Bell 17:26

Hardly. But I like the sound of that.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:29

What were some of the key things that helped you convince him during your pitch,

Art Bell 17:34

when you go into something like that you got to do with a lot of passion. You can't just kind of explain the situation, you have to do everything, but jump up and down. I mean, you really have to push your way through it. The second thing that was very important to Michael, and very important to a lot of people who said you can't do a comedy network. And that was is that going to be expensive. I mean, comedies, typically expensive. Lots of writers doing original comedy of any kind is very expensive. And I said, Well, I thought a lot about that. And I think I've got a way to get into this business without spending a lot of money. And the way is this, we're going to take comedy clips from stand up comedian shows, from comedy movies, from comedy sitcoms, any kind of comedy anywhere, we are going to clip two or three minutes out, and we are going to put that on and it's going to be sort of non stop short form comedy. And we'll have guys sitting at a desk pitching to a comedians probably pitching, saying, here's a clip from Eddie Murphy, or whatever they're going to say and talking about it. And the great news about that I said is that we can get those on a promotional basis. We won't have to pay for them. Because the studios, if I'm right, will think it's a great idea to have their movies and television shows promoted on a full time basis. And Michael thought, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But you know, you might have some obstacles like the unions, the DGA, Writers Guild, the Directors Guild music Guild, I said, Yes. I thought about that. And it may in fact, be the case. But I think here's what we do. We go there first, we basically convinced them and if they say, No, we'll think of something else, or we won't do it. But that's the way we can get into this thing. So he said, okay, and in fact, that's what happened. We went to all the guilds, they all said, Hey, this is fabulous, you know, fine. Sounds like it's good for the industry. So we started down that road, we started clipping, anything we get our hands on. The good news is HBO had a lot of materials because they were running a television movie channel. So we had the materials there. And we had a group called the clips romaniacs that's what we named them a bunch of young producers who were just sitting there watching movies and stuff all day trying to find the funny parts and I loved them because I'd be walking down the hall and they say art art career. You gotta see this, you know, it's from the producers. It's the funniest thing I forgot how funny it was, and they'd show it to me and you know, it was a little bit it took a lot of skill actually to find those funny parts and a fine two and a half or three minutes to cut out and we ended up with a huge pile of this stuff before we launched.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:45

So Alright, so money played into it. So love of comedy, right and your economist?

Art Bell 19:51

Well, Mike I at that point, my economist background had nothing to do with it.

Jeff Dwoskin 19:54

No, but I have it just just your way to manage the money and

Art Bell 19:57

I will I will say this. I was pitching to the right guy because in addition to being the most powerful man in hollywood michael fuchs was the guy who put really high class comedy on hbo he started those hbo comedy specials was one hour specials with klein with carlin with would be billy you know robin williams uncut very highly produced and that really put hbo on the map for comedy so michael a very funny guy loved comedy loved funny people loved funny anything so it's not like i was pitching somebody who didn't care or for whom comedy was you know a sideline that was lucky i think the final thing i must have said to michael that got his attention was you know michael hbo is doing a lot of comedy now we are really known for comedy but i said there's also other guys doing comedy and i said right now one of the biggest comedy shows on television is on a&e and that was true because if you asked anybody like where do you find comedy on cable they would say oh yeah any evening at the improv every night 730 and they played it every night at 730 and when you do that it's like this wall of comedy programming that's always there at that time of day and they became known for it i said you really don't want to cede the comedy space to a&e when you feel silly if they became known for comedy in a way that eclipses what we're doing competition is always good it's always good to get the competitive juices running when you're pitching a new idea like hey if we don't do it the other guy's gonna do and he's gonna eat our lunch

Jeff Dwoskin 21:21

cool so alright so the name of this channel at this point is called the comedy channel

Art Bell 21:25

the comedy channel yes because and we named it because like what else do you call a comedy channel other than a comedy show

Jeff Dwoskin 21:31

right cornering the market on the go to name so couple things happen one two days after your now it's mtv announces they're going to create their own comedy channel ha so now we've gone from no comedy channels in the world to all of a sudden two on a horizon

Art Bell 21:49

yeah how crazy is that i remember that moment because i was coming back from la where michael had thrown michael fuchs had thrown this giant press conference announcing the comedy channel and not only did he announce it not only did he own it he said it was going to be the greatest the greatest cable check i'm laughing because i was so scared when he said this is going to be the greatest cable channel ever it's going to be so funny because hbo knows comedy and we are going to create a comedy channel it's better than anything that's what it scared me that he told the entire world that then i'm coming back from la a couple of days later and there isn't a newspaper hot is announced by mtv networks to compete with the comedy channel and i thought man that is crazy that they really just decided probably the day we launched that they better not cede the comedy space to hbo and why should they they know cable television better than anybody they got mtv they got nickelodeon nick at night they know how to do this stuff they put out a press release and that was really my first lesson in don't underestimate the competition they are going to find you

Jeff Dwoskin 22:52

to do what you said earlier stoking competition when competition can breed greatness and make you up your game and so alright so now you're doing that you're you're now shoring up against ha and then the guild's that we talked about earlier the directors guild says you can't use any of these clips that you're clipping maniacs have created

Art Bell 23:12

yeah that was one of the biggest disappointments of my entire life i have to say because i had this thing all beautifully planned it was all working clipped we had tons of this stuff it was weeks before we were going to launch and the directors guild called our lawyers and said the board said no we assumed the board would say yes but there was one board member who changed his mind and he said i don't want them to do this and that's the end of that you can't do it i was crestfallen as you can imagine very disappointed i went back to my office and my staff said and they said well now what are we going to do and i said well we're going to develop plan b let's see how we do that and that's what we did

Jeff Dwoskin 23:50

so the person who voted no is rumored to be a woody allen yes

Art Bell 23:55

woody allen i say rumored because i never actually verified it and it was never verified to me but the lawyer said that the dga suggested that it was woody allen who objected and i thought oh my god woody allen comedy hero to shut down the comedy network that is an irony that needs a fuller explanation i thought never verified it but there yeah

Jeff Dwoskin 24:20

yeah for woody allen to disappoint everyone that who would see that coming little foreshadowing there and i read that in your book i'm thinking to myself this is why hbo did allen v farrow this is their payback

Art Bell 24:36

time for the woodsman screwing

Jeff Dwoskin 24:37

them with when the comedy channel was at its most needy and shoring up against ha and then gets the ground pulled out from under them

Art Bell 24:46

well they did pull the ground out for a moment for us but as i said we didn't fold we didn't say okay that's the end of that let's shut it down we just said okay how are we going to do this how are we going to launch how are we going to get it out on time what's the new plan because we were in it up to our eyeballs So there's there's no, there's no turning back at that point.

Jeff Dwoskin 25:02

Okay, so the comedy channel launches, yes. Which is the big red button yellow scene from Monty Python kicks it off. Right. And one of the shows that you guys introduced was Mystery Science Theater. 3000. Yeah. Tell us how you kind of you guys discovered that show and in just its path to cult fame?

Art Bell 25:22

Yeah. It's really kind of interesting story. And actually, the show discovered us But what happened is we had a head writer at the channel, we hired a guy named Eddie gorodetsky, who's still a writer in Hollywood, very funny guy. And Eddie got us together. And he said, Guys, we really need that's how we talk. We really need a show where comedian sit in front of the television and they make remarks. They make comedy remarks. And we said, okay, you know, he says, Yeah, it's like a watch us watch television show. Okay, we got it. So we start, everybody starts developing that show, and then a few days later, in the mail, comes a cassette. And there's a note in there and says, Hey, we hear you guys are starting a comedy channel. Is this something that would interest you and we put this cassette in its Mystery Science Theater. 3000, these guys had been doing it for fun at an independent television station in Minneapolis was Joel to robots launching cheesy movies, we thought it was hysterical. We got on a plane the next day, we made the deal. We thought this is great. And I will say this people asked me when I knew the comedy network was going to be you know, the comedy channel was going to be a success. That was the moment and the reason was, I always thought that if we had a comedy channel, then great comedy, innovative comedy would come to us after a while. And here it was, we hadn't even launched and they found us this was a show Mystery Science Theater 3000 would not have ended up on CBS or NBC would not have ended up on HBO even and who knows if it ever would have seen the light of day had there not been a comedy network. And so I thought this is a marker of success.

Jeff Dwoskin 26:45

That's awesome. I remember watching that show. And it's hilarious. It's interesting, though. Like you guys were thinking, Hey, we need watches, watch programs and one shows up in the mail. It just speaks to like the universe sometimes. You just gotta ask for things sometimes. That's

Art Bell 27:00

right. That is exactly right. And I you know, I'm not religious, and I'm not mystical. But man, when that was just a thank you moment. Thank you. whoever sent this our way. I just really feel felt it was just a crazy Carnival moment when the universe works.

Jeff Dwoskin 27:15

Yeah, it works. So the other show of note from that early time period, or there were many but short attention span theater. Yeah. And this was hosted by john stewart later rose to fame on Comedy Central and the Daily Show and Patti Ross, Patti rosborough. This is an infamous story in the sense that you guys fired Pat and really pissed off, john.

Art Bell 27:39

Yeah, that's pretty much the entire outline of the story. Is that there was there No, no, no, it's interesting because I actually thought the two of them were great together and so did everybody when they had them co short attention span theater. I think what happened is Jon Stewart was so completely funny and dominant that he talked a lot and Patty left a lot, you know, and that was pretty much the routine, and I thought it was great. Actually, I thought she was pretty funny. Even when she laughed. I thought she had a funny laugh. She was a very, very funny comedian, but it was decided not by me but some of the other people working on those shows that Patti was not going to stay with the show. So they let Patty go and Jon Stewart when he found out was so angry and so indignant. He said you can't do that. You can't just fire someone like that and you can't fire my partner without telling me That's ridiculous. What do you think this is a corporation why it was a corporation It was so evident that the future jon stewart who is empathic and sensitive and smart and cared about his fellow human beings was really on display at that moment now for whatever reason, and I can't honestly remember the reason it came to me they said aren't Jon Stewart is very upset, he's threatening to quit you're gonna have to go down and calm him down and talk him in saying I probably said Why me But anyway, I went down there to the studio and I had a conversation with him and he was very mad but I did somehow talk him into not quitting and he did stay with the channel for a long long time. But I remember the indignation and his upset very very clearly and listen, he stayed with the channel for a long time a great guy to work with deserves all the fame that he that he got on The Daily Show,

Jeff Dwoskin 29:12

Mark Marin later took over short attention span theater and

Art Bell 29:15

he was on short attention span theater I'm not sure took it over as such, but host I mean, as he hosted he goes a long way to actually bill Mark petalled stint hosting short attention span theater that was that became sort of the go to clip show for comedy, the comedy channel and later Comedy Central and that was a show that then really kind of put on display the original concept we had for the channel of short form programming just kind of piled on top of each other and it worked show worked.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:42

So how launches Yeah, highlighters so now we have the cable comedy wars. We went from Art Bell thinking, Hey, there should be a comedy channel because there is none being shut down by Bridget swooped saved by the most powerful man in Hollywood Michael Fuchs and now suddenly there's a war now there's multiple channels doing comedy and one of the first notable scuffles if you will between you guys was the fight over the bidding for saturday night live to re air saturday night live that's right how detrimental do you think it was to have a loss that scuffle

Art Bell 30:18

at the time that was crushing to us however you know like anything else when there was that kind of a bidding war price of saturday night live was driven up to atmospheric stratospheric levels and we got outbid i think it speaks to the fact that we had a head start and we had pretty good comedy network going and not great you know nobody was great six months into it but we really had some traction and they needed something and they felt they needed it more than we did but i was very upset when we lost it

Jeff Dwoskin 30:46

but in the beginning the critics were not kind right we

Art Bell 30:49

launched into a critic barrage and i think one of the reasons is as i said michael fuchs was so proud of the channel before it launched and michael was you know he was as a powerful man there was a little bit of shot in freud going around there and among the press reporters who thought okay isn't it fun to watch michael fuchs fall flat on his face on the second day that the comedy channel is out and he thought it was he said it was going to be great and guess what it's not great and they wrote that guess what it's not great it's not funny we were called the gong channel we got terrible reviews across the board it was really quite a disaster and a disaster but you got to remember i went to work every day thinking how can we avoid getting shut down that was my new mindset like how do we keep this going because i really wanted to i felt a lot of the weight of the project on me because i pitched it and by this time there was hundreds of people involved obviously had to keep it going but the press savaged us we didn't have much of an audience at that point either we were only distributed to a couple million people because you had to go cable operator to cable operator to get on a cable system in a city so you know we were on in detroit maybe we were on an in phoenix but we weren't on in new york until you know months after we launched in manhattan we really didn't premiere to very many people and that was good i think that was good because it allowed us to repeat the programming a lot as we added subscribers then if you hadn't seen it as we said it was new to you and so we got to repeat our programming very

Jeff Dwoskin 32:12

cool but you guys did license kids in the hall

Art Bell 32:14

yeah well we were lucky you know our parent at that time hbo had discovered kids in the hall and they were a very successful show on hbo and hbo so he threw us a lifeline i mean listen michael was very very concerned that this thing was going to flop and actually that's where the subtitle from my book comes from michael called us in probably four or five six months into the channel and said it took a comedy channel to make me lose my sense of humor he was so angry and i looked around and nobody was laughing and i thought man that's that's not good we had to figure out how to pull it together ultimately i think we did i mean we were head to head with with ha for six months and i felt we were winning we had better ratings at that time we had better reviews we had mystery science theater 3000 which was you know you have one basically hit on your channel you're good to go in that in those days and we had a lot of notice for that we were playing a lot of stand up comedy because we found stand up was very easy for the for the audience to watch we've got more stand up we produce some stand up and i thought things going really really well and then i got a phone call that they were merging ha and comedy channel and i was you know again another in a string of disappointments

Jeff Dwoskin 33:21

in one way though you could look at it as had high not existed and the savaging happened channel may have been canceled right so it's possible that the fighting and an eventual merger is what led to the ultimate success of comedy central

Art Bell 33:37

well i guess we're getting into a conversation of whether there's multiple universes and how things would have played out otherwise i have no idea i prefer to think that comedy channel would have gone on to a brilliant career without the competition of course looking back on it somebody was going to show up with a competitive channel it just happened that they did it six months after we launched one of the big reasons i was upset with a merger when i first heard about it is because i figured i'd lose my job mergers don't necessarily guarantee that you're going to have your job and in fact many people who worked at the comedy channel lost their jobs and many people who work at heart lost their jobs so i felt very lucky when they said okay you and the head of programming from ha are getting together you're going to figure out what the new channel looks like put together a team put together the programming and rename the channel and launch it in the next few months good luck and that's that's how that happened

Jeff Dwoskin 34:29

so you end up with comedy central the name we all know and love today

Art Bell 34:34

we ended up with comedy central as a name which turned out to be a very very lucky thing but those i have to say just to focus on the merger most mergers end in failure in business most mergers have a really tough time because you're combining two different corporate cultures and in our case we had two different concepts for a comedy channel i talked about ours and at that time you know by the by the end of it we had attracted an audience and the audience was young men looking for edgy comedy that's what we were doing and how i had gone sort of more classic sitcom and in fact their motto was comedy for people five to 95 you know they really wanted to throw out a wide net so combining those channels was tough and there was actually talk among the parents meaning mtv networks and hbo that the channel to combine channel would not necessarily make it through the year but the good news is once again i was very committed to making sure our comedy network survive and i found out that my opposite number and the other people on the other side were also committed to seeing a comedy channel one way or the other survive and we worked it out quickly we got together and said okay how are we gonna make this work now think about the good news from my point of view as a programmer we just got saturday night live for a comedy channel one thing you didn't mention is saturday night live had reruns had never been shown before they were licensed at that point because it was shown on nbc then they were rerun in the summer and then they went into the basement and then nbc lauren michaels didn't allow them to be shown anymore when we went after them and did that deal that was a big deal enough business that lauren licensed those

Jeff Dwoskin 36:03

that's pretty awesome so your next big thing is live state of the union sort of i guess roast with al franken

Art Bell 36:11

yeah that's right that was you know we had a group at comedy central we called the buzz committee and the buzz committee was a bunch of wise guys and wise gals probably eight or 10 of us from around the network you know people who love comedy and love to just talk about it and we get together once or twice a week and say okay what's happening in the world what can we take advantage of get a little press on getting noticed maybe new show what what do we got and we just brainstorm and things would come up and one day somebody said well you know listen the state of the union address is coming up and everybody said well that's boring who cares about that and then somebody else said well you know what we could have so have a comedian making comments during the address and someone else said yeah we could do it live that would be good we'd probably get a lot of attention for that and there was state of the union unrest we call it and al franken as you mentioned was the first host i like to say we got al franken started on his political career and he likes to say that's not true but anyway al franken was the first host and he did a terrific job and that was really i think that was a turning point for comedy central not that it wasn't going to be successful from then we knew things were kind of moving in the right direction but suddenly the press looked up and said you know what these guys have comedy central they're doing something they're doing interesting things we saw the state of the union undressed and that that's the future of comedy and of course you can draw a straight line from that to the daily show right right right it was covered a political political stuff and in fact jon stewart did work on covering the conventions that year so we were in it we were in that news area and it did great things for us

Jeff Dwoskin 37:41

so the next year was dennis miller and there's a great story with apple we're gonna let everyone go by the book to get that

Art Bell 37:47

yeah right if i tell all the stories you don't have to buy the book

Jeff Dwoskin 37:50

right there is a killer dennis miller story constant comedy everyone a memoir hard though we'll plug it again at the end of the show but we'll save that one but then bill maher to get back to bill maher from earlier he pitched you politically incorrect which was the earlier incarnation of what is now real time with bill maher on hbo correct how did that pitch go obviously well you got it and then was it better story about about the marketing than the actual pitch of the show

Art Bell 38:19

i mean the interesting thing about the pitch of the show is that bill maher was basically an unknown comic i mean he'd been around he actually had done a movie i think and he had posted on short attention span theater but he was relatively unknown he said he wanted to pitch us a show and so we went to a diner with him in southern california one morning and he said i want to do a show where people actually talk a talk show where people talk instead of just pitching their stuff or talking about their books or their movies i want to talk about real issues and i want to get serious about it and i want to go up to the line and i want to cross the line i'm calling it politically incorrect and i want to get in trouble because it's going to be politically incorrect and we said sold we bought the show on the spot

Jeff Dwoskin 38:58

i enjoyed that version then it got canceled brought back now it's real time

Art Bell 39:02

well that shows been kind of around the block i mean the interesting thing about that show is it didn't do very well for the first six months i mean bill took a long time to get his footing he got a brilliant producer in scott carter they just made that show into a powerhouse so much so that it was really a key show for us and i wanted to do some advertising about it

Jeff Dwoskin 39:18

right some boss advertising that you did that he did not like at all

Art Bell 39:22

that's right we did an outdoor advertising campaign for politically incorrect which i was very proud of and we showed it around we showed it to scott carter is his producer and we showed it to some of the other programming people we did not show it to bill i did not show it to bill why did i not show it to bill because bill would kill it whatever it was it could have been the greatest campaign ever i knew bill well enough to know that he would look at and say that's no good so we didn't show it to bill and i just ran the campaign and i got a phone call from bill and he said i just saw your outdoor campaign for politically incorrect i said yeah he said it's terrible he said you know what you did a terrible job of that campaign if I did my job that badly you would fire me when you, you would fire me you would cancel my show. I said, but bill and he said, so I am going to get you fired. I've already made some calls. I am getting you fired and he hung up. That was quite a moment for me. You know, I,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:15

I would think it was it'd be a moment for anyone. Yeah.

Art Bell 40:18

I'd worked with edgy tab on the past. This was a new one where someone actually wanted to get me fired. I did not get fired, by the way, which was lucky for me. A few months later, she headed to the ad agency who had done the campaign, Alan Kay at Cory K. Brilliant, called me up and said, hey, guess what? We just got nominated for one of our campaigns for a very big award. I said no kidding, which campaign he says for the bill maher politically correct. I said, No, no, no, not anything, but that just bringing it up was going to be a bad move. So he said, Yeah, so he said, Look, we're taking a table at the award ceremony. You're gonna be there with us. It'll be great. We're writing to the awards. And he says, guess who is hosting the award show? I said, Oh, he says Bill Maher. I said, You're kidding me. Bill Maher is hosting the award show where we're up for an award that for a campaign he hated. I said this is going to end in tragedy. So but it didn't actually what happened is we went to the show Bill Maher said okay, The following are, you know, the finalists for our best outdoor campaign, and when he got to politically incorrect, and they showed a big picture of Bill Maher and the politically incorrect outdoor campaign, he turned around and said, Now that's advertising. And sure enough, we won. We won the award. Once again. That's that's karma. The second time in my life. I think

Jeff Dwoskin 41:30

that's right. That's the unit of the universe.

Art Bell 41:33

That's the universe just pointing at me and saying, you're gonna be okay. Okay. You're gonna be okay.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:37

All right. You create this campaign, it raises interest. And Bill Maher show, notably right now, ratings went up. Yeah, he attacks you, threatens you? And then has this stand there while you win the award for said marketing campaign while he's hosting and then probably hands you the award.

Art Bell 41:55

If somebody have written that in a novel, everybody say, that would never happen.

Jeff Dwoskin 41:59

Right? That would be that too on the nose,

Art Bell 42:02

too, on the nose. And that's what that's what's great about memoir, because you're telling stories that actually happened that you couldn't possibly make up in a million years.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:10

Right. And let's not let slide by the way, he said, Now, that's great advertising. They all heard a positive statement. You knew that was a dagger, a final last second dagger in your back before winning, which is classic. One thing that I was reading about in the book that I thought was class x. So Johnny Carson was doing his last show for the tonight show. And you guys just went dark. In honor of Johnny Carson.

Art Bell 42:34

I was something another great moment brought to you by the bus committee. Again, the bus committee got together. Hey, what's happening Johnny Carson, you know, last shows coming up. What are we going to do? And someone said, well, we're all going to be watching it. Maybe we shouldn't have anything on our channel. And somebody said, well, that's ridiculous. You got to put something on and somebody else said, well, let's just go dark. In honor of Johnny's last show. Not only did we do that, we put a little card up that said, we're watching Johnny Carson's last show, you should be too and we had that on for the entire hour, hour and a half whatever was the ad sales guy sold that to a sponsor in one of the great advertising coups, of television history. McElhaney Tabasco sauce, put a bottle of Tabasco sauce next to the side for the hour. Oh, and the best part was really that Johnny Carson on his show that night, on his last show said, I'm really pleased to hear that Comedy Central went dark, none of my show tonight, I just wanted to mention that that was the biggest thrill, we could have to have Johnny Carson to have the Comedy Central on Johnny Carson his lips at that historic moment, we were just floored. As you can imagine,

Jeff Dwoskin 43:40

that's a class act. That was a classy thing for him to do to acknowledge it. Very cool. So after the Johnny Carson thing, there was sort of a change at the top, you got a new boss and TVs started to become the big dogs at the top and you got a new job. You went from marketing to new business development, right? And then the other cool thing that you did was you wrote a book via Comedy Central websites we'd like to see because if we're mid 90s, that would have been a great book to get it. Cuz it's been so new, you know that people are hearing it now ago, what a book about websites now, in the mid 90s. It was brilliant.

Art Bell 44:16

I'll tell you exactly how that happened. A lot of people who were working and important jobs and channel when the management changed, either got fired or got shoved to the side. And I went to New Business Development. And let's see, let me generally just try and remember the number of people in New Business Development at that time. Oh, yeah, one I was new business development. There wasn't a new business evolved for that. And I had to figure out what to do. I was joined by Vinnie, for volley shortly thereafter, we had to figure out what to do. And we were told, Well, look, you know, you got to there's this new thing called the worldwide web should probably put a comedy central web site together. So we wanted to do that. So we started doing that. And you know, a lot of the websites and in those days were just they were rudimentary. It was just what we called brochure where it would have the name of the channel and say, here's our station. And here's a couple of cool things about us by now was the whole thing. And we said, Wait a second. We're a comedy network, we got to do a funny website. And so we started doing original comedy on the website, we actually hired a third guy, a guy named Dave Cohen, who was a radio comedy guy, he had done a lot of writing and performing for radio. And we started doing funny stuff on the web. And we started getting known for it in those days, Wall Street, if Wall Street heard something funny, you know, a joke would circulate in Wall Street and kind of get famous. And we started doing stuff. And all of a sudden, all the Wall Street guys were checking out Comedy Central's website to see what was funny that day. And we kept hearing back from them. Yeah, keep it up. And then we decided that the whole thing was so funny, the whole website thing, because all these sites were popping up. We said, let's do a book of ridiculous websites. And that's what we did websites we'd like to see

Jeff Dwoskin 45:48

a best seller, I'm sure.

Art Bell 45:49

Actually, it sold a lot of copies.

Jeff Dwoskin 45:52

I can imagine it because it would have been it would have been right in the mindset of websites at the time. I mean, that was the hot thing. Apply comedy to it. And then your new boss Baca, things weren't as peachy. And

Art Bell 46:06

yeah, well, you know what, let me tell you something. The reason things happened is because the guy at the top, the president, who was brought in to oversee the merger was not well liked, and he ultimately got fired. And when your boss gets fired, he was my boss, Your days are numbered. Anybody who works in Corporation knows if your boss gets fired, something's going to happen. I mean, maybe not so terrible, but often you get fired too, especially if you're at a higher level. And they didn't fire me immediately. As I said, they put me in new business development under somebody else named Becca. I saw the handwriting on the wall, I chose to ignore it, which was, you know, pretty much of a mistake. I was there with Vinny frivolity. Vinny knew what was going to happen. He got a job as a in development, and CBS, everybody else who was not fired, figured they would be and went on to other jobs. But I figured man, I started this thing. How could they fire me I started it, then they fired me. And it was a very, very big blow to me. It was because I had taken channel upon myself. It was very personal to me, having worked on it for eight years very hard. I worked very hard, and seeing it become successful by that point. And I feel terrible.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:08

There's nothing worse when you're so passionate about something and it gets taken away from you. I can't imagine what it's like to be in the in the TV world where it's it can be cutthroat and things change, and agendas and all that kind of stuff. But it's amazing what you did. And it's amazing. Here we are 30 years later, and it's just part of culture. It just it is something so huge. So which was

Art Bell 47:33

my vision for it? I wanted to be part of the pop culture or the culture in America. And I think we've definitely succeeded in making that happen.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:41

Absolutely. You know, when you think about I know southpark in the daily show started to come as you were leaving, right but anyone anyone listening that loves Tosh, point O drunk history they Amy Schumer, Joe, Nathan, for you, Dave Chappelle show, all those shows came on what you built. And so you know, so thank you for that. Thank you for creating the base that so many people were able to build on. And for all of us just sitting at home, were able to enjoy these many, many years. Yes,

Art Bell 48:09

I'm proud of that. You mentioned that this is the third April 1, the 30th anniversary of the launch of Comedy Central, which is amazing to me that it's 30 years later, and it's still going strong.

Jeff Dwoskin 48:18

You ever right Bridget and go see I told you

Art Bell 48:23

no, I don't actually

Jeff Dwoskin 48:25

know. I just get out.

Art Bell 48:28

Listen, there's there's a million stories like that in the entertainment business. You know, I like who's the guy who passed on Chinatown, you know,

Jeff Dwoskin 48:35

Share, share, share? Well, our this was this is amazing. It was a pleasure meeting you and hearing all these stories and reading your book. And is there a Are you active on social media? Is there a place where people can keep up with your musings

Art Bell 48:48

first of all you can go to they can go to my website if they want to know more about me and my book. And that's ArtBellwriter.com. And you can see some of my other writing too. I'm still writing I love writing. So there's some other writing as an interview with myself or Facebook and Instagram.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:05

Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. This was great again, everyone. Art Bell writer calm.

Art Bell 49:10

Oh, and one more thing. buy my book. Oh, yeah. on Amazon, you go to Amazon. It's for sale. There's an for sale in bookstores. But don't forget to buy my book. And then don't forget to read it. After that.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:20

I read it. Highly recommend it. Thank you again so much for being here. It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for all the laughs that you brought to the world.

Art Bell 49:29

You're welcome. I enjoyed it.

Jeff Dwoskin 49:30

All right. How fun was that? Art Bell, ladies and gentlemen, definitely check out his book constant comedy available on amazon.com.

All right, we're getting close to the end of the show. So you know what time it is. That's right. It's time to read a trending hashtag from the hashtag round up family of games. That's right. You play along one of the hashtag roundup games one of your tweets might be read. I live from Detroit, the Jeff Dwoskin show fame and fortune awaits you. You can download Hashtag roundup app for free totally free on Apple or Google App Stores just search hashtag Roundup. You can also follow us on Twitter at @hashtagroundup and play along on Twitter. There's so many ways that you can follow in play and end up on a future episode. This week's hashtag is brought to you by just the tip tags hosted by Karmin and Jake. Their weekly game had an amazing hashtag recently called #AprilFoolsPrankTips. That's right. They wanted to prepare everyone for April Fool's with some great prank tips. So let's read some of those let's get ready for April 1. It's not an April Fool's day it's a 30th anniversary of Comedy Central so much to celebrate All right, here we go. #AprilFoolsPrankTips...

When plastic wrapping a toilet don't wrap the toilet you use wrap the other person's toilet Ah, that's what I've been doing wrong all these years. Here's another great tip do it on April 2, not April 1. That's when the least expected Ah yes, but I think if it's on April 2, you do run into higher risk of going to jail. All right. Here's another great hashtag April Fool's prank tip after you rubber band the sprayer on the kitchen sink. don't accidentally use it yourself. Haha. How many of us are guilty of that? Oh, here's a good one. Tell people your cat's favorite color is orange. When you secretly know your cat's favorite color is green. Imagine what Bullseye look like in front of your cat. Alright, here's another one. Call the zoo and ask for Mr. Lyons. Hello Is Mr. Lyons there? It's been done so many times that it's just not fun anymore and that's why it might work. Alright everyone, now you got your homework at OSU is Mr. Lyons there all right. Here's an important one April Fool's pranks. They're only worth it if there is lasting physical or emotional damage that's setting the bar pretty high. Okay. Oh, this is the worst April Fool's prank of all call their landline Who is this? How did you get the number? Oh, here's a great April Fool's Day prank park a boat sideways in some sort of canal. That could never happen. And finally, the last #AprilFoolsPrankTips that we're gonna share. don't tweet about it. Oh, okay. All right. That was fun. That was so fun. All right, definitely grab the hashtag roundup app, follow hashtag Roundup, add hashtag roundup on Twitter, play the hashtag games, so you can be on a future episode.

All right. Can you believe it? This episode has come and gone Episode 47 is officially in the books. Thank you Art bell for joining me, everyone, check out his book, constant comedy. And thank you to everyone listening. All the fans that come back week after week means the world to me. I'll see you next week.

Announcer 52:46

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Jeff Dwoskin show with your host Jeff Dwoskin. Now go repeat everything you've heard and sound like a genius. catch us online at the Jeff Dwoskin show.com or follow us on Twitter at Jeff Dwoskin show and we'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai