Sunday night (9:30 PM ET) I decided to check out the new show based around the comedy website CollegeHumor.com, The CollegeHumor Show, which was picked up by MTV last year. But first, I had to find out what channel MTV was on because, well, I never, ever watch MTV anymore. Insert cliche joke about when I was your age MTV actually aired music videos, get the hell off my lawn, yada yada.
For the most part, I’m a fan of the CollegeHumor videos. Sometimes they’re a little over the top or they’re a lot funnier for the people involved than they are for the viewers, but they have a consistent funniness to them, unlike the inconsistent SNL Digital Shorts (side note: I thought this past show’s “I’m on a Boat” was a rare gem.) But could these guys have enough material to cover a weekly, half-hour show?
For the most part, I’m not really sure why there’s anything more to this show other than a bunch of individual sketches. Smaller bits are the strength of this team, which they highlight throughout the episode by showing some of their past videos. In this particular episode they included past videos “The Awkward Rap”:
and “Bless You”:
Those aren’t particularly my favorites, but they give you the gist of what these guys are capable of.
Maybe someone more familiar with CollegeHumor can answer me this. I always thought the CollegeHumor “offices” seen in a lot of the videos was a completely fake backdrop. I mean, really, web-based comedy writers with a huge upper-floor office space in New York? What the hell am I doing wrong? Is that really where these guys spend their working days churning out content and fucking around all the time (and making shirt and tie wearing office dwellers green with envy), or is it a space used once in a while for filming purposes only? If those are real, then holy shit, that’s gotta be a nice chunk of their budget, as they don’t seem to spend too much of it on the production quality of their show.
As for the “story” wrapped around the skit breaks, it’s not nearly as funny as their clips and just doesn’t capture the strong points of what make CollegeHumor funny. For me, I can take them one video at a time, but a long story based around them isn’t the same thing. Like I said in the title of this post: this show belongs on MTV, a station not meant for the likes of me and probably fits right in with the other programming there.
Anyone else catch this show or plan to? Let me know what you thought.
Clacked by Keith McDuffee 
on Feb 09, 2009 @ 17:00 EST5EDT
I haven’t seen the show, so can’t really comment on that. As to the question about the offices, according to crunchbase (https://www.crunchbase.com/company/collegehumor):
“The website is now owned by the media conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp and operated by Connected Ventures.”
Actually, I’m surprised people still buy advertising on MTV. People that age don’t even watch tv, do they? I never thought I would be one of those old people wondering what the young’ns do, but here I am. Go figure.
Saw it, turned it off after the first skit.
I don’t like CollegeHumor, it’s to pretentious. I mean how can you “buy” that “Bless you” bit if you just know they are all faking it? I simply can’t get past that. I simply believe these guys to be too intelligent to actually do what they pretend to do – be dumb. Which they aren’t.
So in the end they are to bright for the stuff they write – maybe if they hired actors I would believe the comedy, as long as they act in their bits themselves I won’t.
I thought the show was great and it truly captures the essence of CollegeHumor. Read a little bit about Ricky VanVeen and Josh Abramson. They started CollegeHumor when they were in college and it along with Vimeo and BustedTees became Connected Ventures. It really is a great story, and the company does bring in some big money. It is one of the only humor sites on the web that actually makes money.
All those people really do work in that office, and that is they job. I’d say they have the greatest jobs in the world.
I loved the show and am very excited for those guys.
https://www.joeonthetube.com
Those are the actual CollegeHumor offices and most of the actors are the actual Collegehumor employees. I personally dug the episode and thought it stayed true the original content while exploring a new medium. And frankly, I think calling any show that has a season premiere episode culminating in a beer pong match “pretentious” is a bit absurd. Maybe if you had watched the whole thing you’d have a different opinion?
I have no opinion on the show, but I wanted to point out that beer pong actually is pretentious now.
The sketches on myspace sometimes make me chuckle, but i was fn pissed when i saw that they got a TV show. If u wanna see something online worth watching check out comeuppence.com/tv. The show is called Blinkered.
Those are there actual offices. They share the space with other Connected Ventures buisnesses such as bustedtees.com.
I would like to point out that whatever you think about the show Collegehumor is an extremely rare example of successfully monetizing internet comedy. This is notoriously difficult as many have tried and failed (take the good quality funnyordie.com which cant turn a profit despite the backing of a proven comedic team). I think that this is more remarkable due to the fact that they did this with a group of young straight out of school amateur comedians. As for the production value I would argue that it is practicly oscar winning by internet standards and at least respectable in the tv world.