Comedy Central to broadcast in High Definition
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As my audience question when I was in the ‘Colbert Report’ studio audience, I asked, “When will ‘The Colbert Report’ and ‘The Daily Show’ be broadcast in high definition?” The answer I got from Stephen was “I gotta get some work done first, honey.” Luckily, we’ve got a bit more of an answer directly from the network today.
After a reader on the Television Without Pity boards commented last week about a notice on their Cox Communication bill saying that they will be receiving Comedy Central HD as of February 10th, I contacted Cox to find out what the schedule was for the HDTV release. According to David Grabert of Cox Communications, “Cox is launching Comedy Central in the majority of our markets and it will be available widely by the end of 1Q. Our Las Vegas market is launching on February 10.”
And now Comedy Central has made an official announcement about the HDTV rollout – huzzah! Here’s some of what has been announced so far (links omitted):
NEW YORK, January 13, 2009 — It’s true. Comedy is funnier in high definition and COMEDY CENTRAL, the only all-comedy network, is scheduled to launch COMEDY CENTRAL HD beginning today on Cablevision* and on Cox and DirecTV later this month, with more launches anticipated throughout 2009, it was announced today by Michele Ganeless, president, COMEDY CENTRAL. (*note: the launch on Cablevision will occur over a three-day period)
“COMEDY CENTRAL’s viewers are some of the earliest adopters of new technology and when they are not consuming content on the go, either online or on their phones, many of them are sitting in front of a high definition television, making programming decisions based on what’s on in their high def tier,” said Ganeless.
…
The Emmy® and Peabody® Award-winning network mainstays, “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report,” will initially be upconverted for COMEDY CENTRAL HD but will be broadcast in native high definition sometime in the future.
It’s my understanding that the shows are a bit tricker to film in HD, with the more expensive equipment and rewiring of the studios, and they’re waiting on a few more decisions to be made before the equipment is purchased and commited to the shows. We’ll definitely keep you posted as news becomes available.
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4 Comments
January 13th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Wow, DB. I’d forgotten you had asked that question! It all comes back to me now… :-)
And slightly off topic, I’m sure you noticed that Fareed Zakaria is going to be on TDS this week? It really made me smile. My husband told me that FZ was standing right next to us in that tunnel, but I didn’t notice him, I was so focused on asking my question!
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January 13th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Awesome news! Now I just need BBC America and MSNBC to climb on board and I won’t have to watch any standard def TV anymore. Yippee!
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January 13th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Finally a reason to be happy about having Cox cable!
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January 13th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Hmmm… it takes quite a bit of equipment to tango though. The TDS/TCR team would have to switch to HD cameras both in studio and on the field if they haven’t done so already. Judging from the fact that all their video is fullscreen, I highly doubt they’ve made the switch yet. However, here’s hoping they’ll be good to go by day one.
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