HBO, sensing a need for "transactional immediacy," figured to meet the challenge with a 24-hour-a-day "vertical format" in a basic cable milieu.
In other words, a comedy channel that you don't have to pay extra to get.Beginning in November, HBO's Comedy Channel will premiere on basic cable systems - viewers won't have to buy HBO to get it. HBO executives said they would announce later this month how many cable systems will carry it.
The channel's format is still sketchy, but the plan is that it will offer quick bites of stand-up comedy, movie clips, stage bits and some full-length films.
HBO, which has been bread and butter to a lot of comedians with its "On Location" shows and "Comedy Experiment" series on Cinemax, has already signed a number of comedians to develop regular bits and programs for the new channel. They include Richard Belzer, Rich Hall, Paula Poundstone and Wil Shriner.
HBO will get a head start on MTV, which also announced a 24-hour comedy channel, HA TV, which is scheduled to premiere early in 1990. It's format, too, is still in the planning stages, but will probably more resemble MTV, with "comedy jocks" introducing material.
Dick Beahrs, president of HBO's Comedy Channel, explained to a group of TV critics meeting here that viewers have demonstrated a need for "transactional immediacy."
"Consumers want what they want when they want it," he said, citing the popularity of microwave ovens and VCRs, for instance.
Beahrs envisions viewers watching a favorite network series, cable show or movie and suddenly getting a nagging feeling that, in the motto of the Comedy Channel, there might be "something funny going on" over there. Zap. Faster than instant coffee in a microwave oven, they have switched over to the Comedy Channel for a quick chuckle.
The "vertical format," he explained, just means you only get one format, such as all news on CNN and all sports on ESPN.
The advantage of comedy programming, he said, is that it can be tempered to meet the time of day. But at no time of day will there be any R-rated language or subject matter, said John Newton, executive vice president in charge of programming for the Comedy Channel. This is, after all, advertiser-supported basic cable, not pay TV where viewers choose to get the material by paying extra each month.
There will be no Sam Kinisons or other comedians who depend on working "blue," said Newton. In fact, he insisted that the Comedy Channel will not be "the stand-up channel."
A promotional tape showed comedians as hosts of regular features who talked directly to viewers and sometimes interviewed people on the street a la "Late Night with David Letterman."
-Elsewhere in television:
LONI GETS HER WISH - Loni Anderson said she was 14 when she first saw "Sorry, Wrong Number" and dreamed of playing the part of the bed-ridden woman who accidentally listens in on a phone conversation and discovers a murder plot. Anderson gets her wish this coming season when she stars in a remake of the movie for the USA Network.