Culture in general,
but comedy specifically,
I think is a gateway
and the research shows
that it is a gateway
to reach more people.
- Michael Jordan famously said,
"Well, Republicans and
Democrats buy sneakers."
When he first was a spokesman for Nike.
- And look at Nike now.
- Right, well, there seems
to have been a change
in that attitude.
- Absolutely.
- Whether it's the far edgier
and more overtly political programming,
topical programming of "Comedy Central"
many other examples
that you can find where
now properties of major
communications companies
feel comfortable saying,
alright, we're gonna let
our entertainers and artists
be themselves, say what's on their minds,
advocate for causes, so on.
How do you understand that change?
It's a big change.
- I'm glad you asked this question.
There's a palpable shift
towards values-based work being done.
And the example of Michael Jordan and Nike
fast forward to just the last year at Nike
taking a meaningful stand
about race in our country
with Colin Kaepernick
just shows that shift
in a really visible way.
But I think it's also
because the consumers want it
and there's a dance of who's leading who,
and I think in some moments
the consumers are leading us
and in other moments we can lead too,
to show that a company is
a collection of people.
And so we have heart and values as well.
And I think that the consumers,
and studies show that
particularly younger consumers,
there's more brand affinity
for brands that mean something
and not just the selling of widgets
or the selling of content.
I believe that younger
consumers will line up
to make purchases
or spend their time watching
content that has heart,
that is coming from an
entity that means something.
- Is it also that the
audience has been broken up
into many smaller pieces,
into more discreet pieces,
that allow a company like Viacom
to allow "Comedy Central" to
show a little bit more leg
if you will.
CBS, a generation ago,
two generations ago,
was showing "Green Acres"
and "Petticoat Junction"
and very studiously not taking stands.
When "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour"
stepped out of line,
they got slapped down pretty good
by the Standards and Practices people.
But the audience is very different,
there's no network that commands
40% of the vast American audience anymore.
- Absolutely, everything is changing.
Media has been disrupted.
I think you see that in our willingness
to let the audience lead.
The digital age as we're all
adapting to and living in.
Young people today
aren't even cord cutters
because they never had
a cord to begin with.
So it's exciting to see where they are
and how we can meet them.
We wanna create content
that meets the audience where they are
and that drives a cultural conversation
around the issues that we care about.
But I think, to speak to your examples,
there's also the Tradition of Norman Lear
and from the same era, "All in the Family"
and "Another Time"
when,
Americans were divided across many issues,
the war, race, gender.
The narrative part of comedy
is also a really effective tool
to express ideas.
And it's not the same as
the biting political satire
the stand-up comedy
that is also effective in its own way.
But I think we should
think more expansively
about comedy as not just the
daily show, which I love,
but also the shows that are communicating
important messages
about who we are and who we want to be.
- What's possible now in
a 500 channel universe
where more and more of your consumers
are even watching on two and
a half and three inch screens?
- And only for two or
three minutes at a time.
I actually think that's really exciting
and in that there isn't
a one way how to do it,
and we're experimenting
and creating new ways to reach people.
And in fact, the digital age
is giving us an opportunity
to create more snackable
content, short form.
It also happens to be a lot less expensive
than some of the episodic
television we see
can cost millions of dollars
per episode to produce.
And what we find on YouTube,
because there're so many self creators,
we can create too,
and do it with the best writing
and great production value
because it's what we do
and create more of it and see what works.
Speak to our audience
with important messages
and learn from that
and keep creating comedy for
social change that's effective.
- You create a community of interested
and like-minded people.
The old idea was not turning anybody away.
Is there a risk, an implicit risk,
an embedded risk in taking bold stands
on issues of current
controversy in any society
where the person who says,
"Well, I wanna have a laugh
and I like this or that program,
but if they stand for X
and I don't stand for that,
I'm gonna go somewhere else."
- I think that's why
we have to be strategic
about what issues we decide
to put our flag out on.
I agree, I think our audience comes to us
for the comic relief in their life,
to find a laugh
and we're going to continue
to deliver super funny,
personally relatable,
culturally relevant content.
But also I think in the
spaces that we've defined,
we care about,
we wanna go a step further.
So it shouldn't feel like we're
beating people over the head
or turning "Comedy Central"
into an after school special.
I am certain that the comedic
talent at this network
will be able to find a way
to still be just as funny
and move people towards
different understandings
and then up a ladder of engagement towards
taking action when necessary.
And it can not be an everyday thing,
it needs to be really thoughtful
and with a mind towards the
underlying humanitarian concern
that is at the base of I think all of the,
what you might call political issues.
- But the digital world
has created a feeling
among the customers
that they can be heard on
a wide range of things,
whether they just liked it or not,
but also respond to the
messages that are being sent
in ways that are so different
from what it was in the '70s,
where if you sat down and wrote a letter,
you didn't always feel that
somebody important was gonna read it. -
Yeah, oh no, our brands talk back to you.
I think that's really exciting.
One of the first projects
that I worked on at "Comedy Central,"
because I started just
ahead of the midterms,
was a voter engagement campaign.
So we created a piece of content
that mocked the preponderance
of celebrity PSAs
encouraging people to go vote.
So we did a Mock the Vote,
where we had actors,
nobody that you would recognize,
playing regular people,
asking the questions of,
does Lady Gaga think I should vote?
Does Michael Jordan think I should vote?
Just naming a bunch of people,
well-known celebrities.
Of course they think you should vote,
but we ended that PSA
with the #ShouldWeVote.
And we invited our viewers
to use the #ShouldWeVote
on Twitter
and they did.
And they tagged their favorite celebrity
with #ShouldWeVote
and many of those
celebrities played along.
So when a fan of Amy Schumer says,
"Hey @amyschumer, #ShouldWeVote"
She responded and said, "Yeah,
of course you should vote."
She did it in a much more hilarious way,
but there were many examples of brands
and celebrities who played along
at this new way of
engaging with our audience.
I am hopeful that the work that I do
will only grow our audience.
The intent is not to turn people away,
but it's to keep them
and to engage them in
a way that's different
than we've been doing before,
which is often, comedy as critique,
or comedy as commentary.
I think that we can do the comedy
that's not just for laughs.
That is, yes, it is funny
and it can help create positive change.
