Having worked with Chris Rock, Bernie Mac and so forth. I may put up 45 shows because I have so much and why not. I shot 3.8 terabytes of material for "Comedy After Dark." We'll never run out of material. As long as you hit those benchmarks, whatever else you deliver is gravy. How will you do it? When you make the deal with YouTube, you list what you're going to deliver. It's hard to quantify success on YouTube. We have the money to do it so I would love to figure out something in sports. Comedy and sports build networks and studios." Ever since he said that, I've been thinking about what we could do in sports that fits our demo. You don't want to be BET you want to be Viacom.
BERNIE MAC YOUTUBE KINGS OF COMEDY HOW TO
What advice have you gotten about how to build out the channel? I had a meeting in New York with Jon Miller at News Corp., and he said, "You don't have to be just a black comedy channel you want to be a black network. We knew each other for years and when they started awarding channels I got one.
He went to Google, and I was one of the first people to pitch my channel to YouTube. Malik eventually left Paramount said to give him a couple months. He said we should have done this years ago and set up a meeting, but now all those guys are no longer there.Īnd then what happened? I wasn't getting any money upfront, and that wouldn't work for me. Then a few years later when I called Tom Lesinski out of the blue and asked who was running Paramount Digital - he used to be in home video - I found out he was running it. With all the comedy I have - and I own all of it and the brands - there are so many opportunities with phones, we figured there was something we could do with it but didn't know what. So you have wanted to do this for some time what took so long? Five years ago Malik Ducard and I had a conversation. He had an accent, so I asked him where he was from and he said," Norway." I'm like, there's white dudes in Norway who like Bernie Mac? I talked to a guy the other day who liked one of my Bernie Mac clips, a white advertiser. When Bernie Mac passed away, magazines said "King of Comedy." When "Think Like a Man" came out, all the press releases described Steve Harvey as a "King of Comedy." It's almost a part of their name - they should change it on their birth certificate. Why are you so convinced "Original Kings of Comedy" can find an audience on YouTube? If you look up when "Kings of Comedy" is on cable and then turn to your phone and go to Twitter and put in "Kings of Comedy," every three minutes there will be 40 tweets about it. And who is Bernie Mac? They had never heard of him. Every studio, everyone - even little ones - all said comedy concert films do not work. When I went to show "Kings of Comedy," it took me two years to get a deal. Some of the names you will not know, but this is what you have to know. What kinds of comedians performed? All the stand-up was done in-house with 31 comedians from all over the country. We shot some stuff on a yacht, on the beach, in mansions. It's not a typical comedy show where the whole hour is in the club. It's real sexy we filmed the show inside of an adult club but you can't really tell. TheWrap caught up with Latham, who owns a three-year deal with YouTube and a seven-year deal with Paramount Digital, to discuss his plans for the channel, comedy in the YouTube era and finding the next Bernie Mac.īesides all of the archival footage, what kinds of shows can viewers expect from this channel? There's "Comedy After Dark," which is a stand-up show hosted by Jenna Jameson, Rosa Acosta, Carolina Catalino and Trina. He convinced YouTube by combining his trove of original content, which includes "Original Kings of Comedy," "Queens of Comedy," "Bad Boys of Comedy" and "Latin Kings of Comedy," with a bevy of new shows like "Comedy After Dark," a comedy show filmed in a strip club.