Comedy Central Founder: The Art of Comedy

Comedy Central founder Art Bell, is today's guest joining us on the Steve Jobs inspired Join Up Dots business podcast. He is a former media executive known for creating, building, and managing successful cable television channels. In 1988, When a young, mid-level employee he pitched a novel concept—a television channel focused 100% on just one thing: comedy—to the chairman of HBO. The pitch went well and he not only got the greenlight for his project, he also went on to hold senior executive positions in both programming and marketing at Comedy Central. During that time, he also co-authored a humor book entitled Web Sightings: A Collection of Websites We'd Like to See. After leaving Comedy Central, Art became president of Court TV, where he was a guiding force behind one of the most successful brand evolutions in cable television. How The Comedy Dots Joined Up For Art As he says "Ever since the idea had first occurred to me while writing and performing with the Wharton Follies, I kept thinking about how great an all-comedy television channel would be. New cable channels were launching all the time and I expected someone would announce an all-comedy channel any minute, but nobody did." He know has brought all his lessons and experience together in one best selling memoir Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor From disastrous pitch meetings with comedians to the discovery of talents like Bill Maher and Jon Stewart, this intimate and laugh-out-loud funny memoir peers behind the curtain and reveals what it's really like to work, struggle, and ultimately succeed at the cutting edge of show business. So when comedy is so subjective what made him think that he could bring this into the mainstream and out of the clubs? And how did he get the momentum building until it became a household name across the world. Well let's find out as we bring onto the show to start joining up dots, with the one and only Art Bell Show Highlights During the show we discussed such weighty topics with Art Bell such as: Art shares the first few weeks of the launch of Comedy Central, when he got many phone calls from people telling him "It just isn't funny". We think about the concepts across the generations that parents everywhere hated, which was a turning point to careers and industries across the world Art discusses the failure rate of new business across America, and why it is such a shocking statistic to him. And lastly….. How he got fired from the very business that he set up, which then lead him onto a new path which he feels is so exciting.