Art Bell’s Bio
Art Bell Writer: I was born on the Jersey Shore and grew up in a middle-class household in the late 1950s and 1960s. My earliest ambitions were to become a famous scientist and to be funny. I worked hard at both through grade school, and the science aspiration got me A’s but the funny aspiration got me kicked out of class for “cutting up.” (If I’d been funnier the teachers wouldn’t have kicked me out.)
In high school, I found a more productive outlet by starting an underground newspaper called “The Tongue” and writing biting satire about my teachers, fellow students, and high school life. Of course, that too got me in trouble. I was beginning to understand that funny and trouble seemed, at least in my case, interconnected.
College (I went to Swarthmore College) was a more sober undertaking, although I did hit the stage in annual comedy sketch shows and played Motel the Tailor in the college production of Fiddler on the Roof. I was sure that would be my last time on stage, but I was wrong.
After graduation I spent a few years in Washington DC as an economist working on energy and environmental projects for the federal government. While I enjoyed it, I found myself reading Coal Weekly one afternoon and saying to myself, “I’m not a Coal Weekly kind of guy.” I quit my job and went to business school. Now I’m not saying I didn’t get a good business education at Wharton Grad — I did — but for me the best part was writing and performing in the Wharton Follies, an annual musical revue put on by students.
Upon graduating, I got a job at CBS, then HBO, where I started the Comedy Channel that became Comedy Central. After that I was President of Court TV, then worked for a while as a consultant to a bunch of television companies. Most interesting project: commercializing 3D television. A least successful project: commercializing 3D television. Too bad. It was really cool.
After I left the TV business, I took some writing courses and found I loved writing. Constant Comedy is my first book, not counting a humor book I wrote with a couple of other guys while at Comedy Central. I hope to write some more books, but hey, who knows? I play piano and drums and I’m married to Carrie Livingston Bell and have two grown children. And that’s pretty much the story.
Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor
Constant Comedy is the story of how I started Comedy Central (originally called The Comedy Channel) in 1990, and how I helped make the fledgling channel a success. This book is my first-person account of the birth and development of a channel that went on to become a powerhouse in comedy entertainment.
We live in a world where entrepreneurs are rock stars. They are young, brash, and ruthless, and impossible to ignore. I was none of those when I tried to get a comedy channel started in 1988 while working as a mid-level employee at HBO, but I was persistent. In my heart, I knew that the world needed a comedy channel. HBO top brass initially told me I was wrong, but I wrote up my plan anyway, and eventually, it found its way to the Chairman. He loved it.
A short time later, in April 1989, HBO announced plans to launch the first all-comedy cable network, The Comedy Channel. Two days later MTV announced that they would launch a comedy channel called HA! The Comedy Network. The “comedy war” raged for months, but by the end of 1990, both channels were considered failures. They merged, my bosses were fired, and I was named co-head of programming for the combined entity, renamed Comedy Central. Could I make it work?
This memoir is my behind-the-scenes look at Comedy Central’s early days: how I overcame inept management, crazy comedians, and my own inexperience; how we created breakthrough programming and marketing; and how two completely different corporate cultures from HBO and MTV came together to make Comedy Central one of the most successful and creative purveyors of popular culture in the country.
I take the reader into pitch meetings with comedians, live broadcasts that almost spiraled out of control, and board meetings with top executives so powerful that they could make or break my career in an instant. The book also interweaves relevant personal stories that describe my love of comedy at an early age and my influences and experiences along the way.
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