Tag: television

How to Get a Comedy Central Half Hour

Here’s an article that I found that was written by Adam Newman, a comic who recently recorded his Comedy Central half hour. Half hours are a huge deal in the industry because Comedy Central gets your name out there. You probably have never heard of Adam Newman, even though he’s a fantastic comic who has performed on several late night talk shows.

In the article Newman describes the process for submitting to Comedy Central and discusses his approach for the submission video. I hadn’t heard of ComedianU before I read this article, which seems blasphemous. It looks like a fantastically cool site and now I’m going to check it out all the time!

Read How Adam Newman Got His Half Hour Special On Comedy Central here.

Hannibal Buress’s Unemployable Pilot Released

Way back when, Comedy Central ordered a pilot of Hannibal Buress’s show Unemployable. It was never picked up. Hannibal was recently allowed to release the episode.

The premise is that Hannibal has never had a job other than comedy before, so he tries out a bunch of odd jobs to see how truly unemployable he is. Sort of like Dirty Jobs, but less dirty and more funny. Honestly, I think the show could be better given Hannibal’s awesome sense of humor. It doesn’t really play to his strengths and I can see why Comedy Central didn’t pick it up. But it is a fun 20 minutes with some funny editing. People love Hannibal. And he’s from Chicago, like me! Check it out!

Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo Now On HBO

Amy Schumer has been everywhere this year. Trainwreck, Saturday Night Live, Inside Amy Schumer, and a million different talk shows.

Her new stand up special, Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo came out yesterday on HBO. Someone with HBO, hook me up?

Here’s her trailer for it.

Fun fact: Amy Schumer used to date Anthony Jeselnik, who’s special came out the day before on Netflix.

If You Appreciate Sports and Comedy…

Check out Bill Simmons’ old podcast, The B.S. Report. Bill Simmons is the former ESPN analyst, journalist, and founder of Grantland who was fired from ESPN last spring for “no one really knows why.”

I’m a huge fan of his, mostly because he’s interested in a lot of the same things I’m interested in: sports, film, and comedy.

His old podcast is mostly interviews with sports figures, but it’s also many other things. My favorite interviews are those with comedians, of which he has a decent number. And they’re all top notch comedians and writers who he invites on the show because he personally likes them, not because they’re promoting something. Bill Burr, Louis C.K., Jimmy Kimmel, Lena Dunham, etc. He also knows a surprising amount about comedy for not being a comedian and does a lot of great research for the show. He asks interesting questions that aren’t always about comedy, which is also a nice change of pace from the typical comedian interview.

You can find The B.S. Report on Youtube here and his new podcast, which I have not had the pleasure of hearing yet, here. I particularly like Simmons’ interview with Larry David, head writer of Seinfeld.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp02rpxRyi8