Superdeluxe launches

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on January 30th, 2007

TBS, who is staking it all on comedy programming (“very funny” is their tagline. No caps, which makes it… hysterical!), has launched what the folks in the biz like to call an “online comedy initiative,” called Superdeluxe. (At least that’s what they kept calling it in the phone conversations we had with the folks in Atlanta. It seems that way back in October, they were hot on recruiting us in some sort of an editorial capacity– they wanted to pry the Halves of the Staff away from SHECKYmagazine to run their sparkling new comedy video juggernaut. We were all flattered and all, and we signed some sort of NDA (which is why we didn’t talk about it until now), but the whole thing just sort of quietly and slowly (and agonizingly) disappeared. Only recently did we find out that it was launched. Very frustrating!)

Anyway, it’s up and it’s kind of a cross between YouTube and ComedyCentral.com or, as they put it:

…Super Deluxe is the premier spot on the Internet for top-quality comedy videos. Why? It’s simple. We’ve got some of the funniest peeps in the comedy biz making exclusive clips for us. And unlike other video sharing sites, we specialize strictly in comedy.

It’s the latest thing and it’s hot and all the nets are doing it. As we posted in our Year in Comedy posting:

MySpace.com creates MySpace Comedy and YouTube is embraced by standup comics and standup comedy fans. And every other week sees the announcement by some huge media entity of their “online comedy initiative.” HBO, TBS, Comedy Central, NBC and others have announced such initiatives where they will, to varying degrees, develop comedy programming and build a site that relies heavily on “user-generated content” and serve as high-tech hothouses for future programming.