Jon Stewart: TV Mogul
Comedy Central is banking on fans wanting more than a daily dose of Jon Stewart. Literally.
TV's anti-Walter Cronkite has obtained financing from his home base cable network to resurrect his long-dormant Busboy Production shingle. In exchange, Stewart will give Comedy Central first crack at picking up all the projects it develops, network president Doug Herzog announced Tuesday.
Stewart will run the company with Daily Show executive producer Ben Karlin, a former Onion editor who joined the fake news anchor's staff in 1993, became head writer in 1999 and with whom Stewart cowrote his New York Times bestseller, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. (The tome, a parody of civics textbooks, owes a measure of its success to Wal-Mart, which banned the book for its naked illustrations of the Supreme Court justices, in turn pumping up sales.)
The first-look deal allows Stewart and his team to create new comedy series that mine the habitual funnyman's trademark brand of humor. If Comedy Central passes on the shows, Stewart is free to shop them to other channels.
"Jon Stewart is the preeminent voice in comedy today," Herzog says in a statement. "As evidenced by the incredible success of America (The Book), Jon and Ben have much more than a nightly TV show's worth of comedy in them and we're incredibly excited about the possibility of making more television with this exceptionally talented group of artists."
The deal is akin to the one David Letterman has with CBS for his WorldWide Pants outfit, which has developed and produced the Eye network's Everybody Loves Raymond and Late Late Show and NBC's Ed.
Heading up development at Busboy will be Richard Korson, a former development director at Comedy Central and an executive producer of the net's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn; Chris McShane will handle talent and identify potential projects.
This is Stewart's second go-round as a budding TV mogul.
The comedian had previously partnered with NBC in 2002 to write and executive produce a half-hour comedy starring Daily Show correspondent Stephen Colbert that drew on Colbert's childhood in South Carolina. But, according to Daily Variety, that show never got off the ground.
Stewart launched Busboy back in the mid-'90s when he was an up-and-coming comic best known for his hosting MTV's The Jon Stewart Show. Shortly after the one-hour show entered syndication, the joke slinger signed a production deal with Miramax to star in at least two projects per year and develop his own shows.
But when Stewart's stock dropped with the cancellation of The Jon Stewart Show, the Miramax deal fizzled, and Busboy was shuttered.
Now Stewart's stint on the The Daily Show has made him a comedic force to be reckoned with again. He has won five Emmys in the past three years and just picked up a Grammy Sunday for Best Comedy Album for the audiobook of America.
The news spoof scored record ratings during last fall's presidential election (the Sept. 30 post-presidential debate episode attracted a series high 2.4 million viewers). Stewart became a full-fledged pop-culture icon following an appearance on CNN's Crossfire where he told Tucker Carlson to "stop hurting America" and called him a "dick."
More people downloaded the clip of the showdown than actually watched Crossfire, which CNN canceled a few months later.
No word how much the production deal was worth. But Stewart's already doing pretty well for himself. Last March, he agreed to a four-year contract extension estimated at $1.5 million a year that will keep him anchoring The Daily Show through the 2008 presidential race.
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