Like a freshman finding his footing, CollegeHumor.com began as a viral video website but has grown into a TV powerhouse. CH’s Sam Reich speaks about the relationship with its parent company, the success of Jake & Amir, and those swirling movie rumours.
If you’ve ever seen the online videos Legalize Shrooms, We Didn’t Start the Flame War, Font Conference or Street Fighter: The Later Years, you were indulging in College Humor. Literally. CollegeHumor.com has become one of the hottest websites for comedic videos, many of them original productions. It pokes fun at workplace antics, the extracurricular lives of video game characters, the stoner call to legalize magic mushrooms…basically, the kind of jokes college kids would email each other daily.
CollegeHumor.com has mushroomed into an online force: it attracts more than six million unique visitors a month. And its YouTube channel has accumulated 221,380 subscribers.
The 10-year-old site has been peddling their irony-soaked wisecracks for awhile, but in the past several years has it begun to move past its freshmen years. After being acquired by IAC in 2006, CollegeHumor has won acclaim for its original video series such as Hardly Working (picture a low-brow version of The Office) and Jake & Amir (when an idiot is obsessed with a colleague). Even more impressive is the company’s move to the set-top box — in February, New York-based CollegeHumor debuted a TV show on MTV, running for six episodes before recently wrapping it up.
Moving from online to TV is not the only big step for the comedy site. CollegeHumor also produces live shows and college tours, published several books, and is writing a movie script. To reveal more about CollegeHumor’s progression, Sam Reich, president of original content, spoke to DigitalJournal.com about their funny videos being more than YouTube hits.
DigitalJournal.com: What was the biggest challenge in developing a CollegeHumor show for MTV?
Sam Reich: The most glaring differences is that we were writing for Net and writing for TV. But you know what they say, with online content there is no room for subtlety. Writing for online has to be in your face and if people don’t get the joke within the first 20 seconds you’re done. TV audiences not only have more patience, but they want to be treated more patiently. Sitting back on a couch and leaning forward towards a PC are very different postures. So we had to learn some more sensitivity.
Reich: Oh yeah. We’ve worked harder on the TV stuff than on anything else. To simultaneously run a website and video channel, and then add a TV show to the mix, that’s very hard. But at the same time we’re having lots of fun. When I wake up at 6 a.m. and get home at midnight, that feels OK. We’re nothing if not producing stuff all the time.
DJ: So will there be a second season of CH on MTV?
Reich: Well, it’s hard to speculate, but we performed beyond expectations, ratings-wise. By the end of first season we really hit our stride and I’m optimistic.
DJ: Looking at a sketch show like Hardly Working, it’s all about workplace antics. Is that a portrait of the CollegeHumor offices?
Reich: Some of it is based on real stuff that happened in our office. For example, after we wrapped the TV show, a spontaneous wrestling match broke out and people were placing bets, throwing each other onto floor, and I thought well this isn’t a lie, Hardly Working is kinda like us.
DJ: You were bought by mega-corp IAC in 2006. How would you describe your relationship with them?
Reich: If we didn’t have IAC funding, we wouldn’t be able to expand our content to include original video [CollegeHumor.com also features other videos posted online]. We started with a great relationship with Michael Jackson, who’s worked on Da Ali G Show, Channel 4, and since he left we have become more intimate with IAC. Only a small group of us, though, go and meet with IAC. They’re like the Wizard of Oz.
DJ: Have you ever met IAC CEO Barry Diller?
Reich: Yes, and I got a sense he’s a big fan of what we do. One time I asked him that if we had a Barry Diller character in a video, would he like it if Leslie Nielsen played him. He said he knows Nielsen from back in the day, and then he said no, not a good idea [laughs].
DJ: We’ve heard some rumors about a CollegeHumor movie coming out.
Reich: We’re still working on a script. It’s going back and forth between us and a screenwriter. We’re in conversation with a few studios but nothing is confirmed yet.
DJ: Also, tell us a bit more about the CollegeHumor Live tours.
Reich: There’s the tour which goes to colleges, which includes comedians and some of our editorial staff. Then we have a monthly live show in NYC at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and that show has never not been sold out. It features some stand-ups and sketches. Even I have to learn my lines but my background is in theatre so it’s a thrill.
