Unfortunate news for fans of the show:
Chappelle’s Show is a no-go, bitch!
In a surprise announcement Wednesday, Comedy Central announced that the highly anticipated third season of Dave Chappelle’s show will not make its May 31 premiere date.
“Comedy Central has suspended production on the third season of Chappelle’s Show until further notice,” network spokesman Tony Fox said in a brief statement. “All parties are optimistic that production will resume in the near future.”
They’re paying Chappelle $25 million a year, plus a cut of the DVD sales. I wonder if the pressure is getting to him?
More likely the pressure is getting to the people that give Dave his material. The show was pretty spotty to begin with.
I heard a rumour that he’d found God.
The Newsweek report claims Chappelle wants to delve into more controversial racial issues, unsettling “Comedy Central” executives; Comedy Central and an employee in Chappelle’s camp said last week the delay “is not a network issue.”
I think it has more to do with that then anything else. I doubt Chapelle would just mentally collapse after working for years to get to the point he is at. Chances are Comedy Central is pressuring him about some of the material he wants to put forward.
That sounds much more logical. The times I have seen him interviewed, he has been incredibly interesting and intelligent. Not that I am saying he could not be happy doing what he is doing and not saying only morons do the type of humor he does. You have to be bright to be a comedian for as broad an audience as he has. WHat I mean is that he seems to have a lot more to say on a lot of issues that he cannot get across in that 22 min. window of skit-based comedy he has on The Chappelle Show. Although, with all the commercials, it seems like we get more like 15 mins. of show.
A guest on the Stern show kinda got into that a few days ago. Chapelle’s bascially been a devout muslim for awhile now, it’s doubtful it’s religious. More than likely it’s a case of writers block (which hurts so much more when your show was 110% funnier than alot of shows out there at the time)
Our local TV pundit thinks something big is lurking under the surface here:
– Here is what it looked like to the outside world when Comedy Central announced it was delaying the May 31 premiere of “Chappelle’s Show” without explanation and stopped production: “Wow, that’s weird. Hmmm. I wonder what happened.”
Here’s what it looked like to a TV critic: “Sweet mother of God, he’s dying, on drugs, or Comedy Central has been poked in the eye by a dumb stick.”
Make no mistake about it. This is major news. Less than a year ago, Comedy Central stunned the industry by giving star Dave Chappelle $50 million to re-up – one of the richest contracts in cable history. Chappelle is the channel’s biggest star after Jon Stewart, and if you’ve never seen his show or watched the DVD of his series, then you’re not a college student. “Chappelle’s Show” is an enormous hit on the college circuit, and the DVD of the first season went through the roof – it’s currently the best-selling TV series on DVD ever. That prompted the gigantic payout from Comedy Central.
Then, with the hype machine spewing smoke about the third season start on May 31 – disaster. Comedy Central released a terse announcement that production had stopped on the series but both side were optimistic life would return to normal. Listen, a show doesn’t cease production unless something woeful has happened. A hit like “Chappelle’s Show” – which draws over 3 million viewers for original episodes (in layman’s terms: That’s just astonishing) – does not miss its season premiere unless, well, unless the star has fallen down a very large hole.
Hrm. How much does Jon Stweart get paid? And why the hell haven’t they released DVDs of the Daily Show? I think I saw that they released an Indecision 2004 DVD, but I want something more than that.
Well they can’t very well release it all. They make something like 200 episodes of that show a year, right?
A fair amount of it is redundant or repeated segments, though. It might be more manageable if they just did the headlines and feature stories bits. Maybe a “best of” interviews. It’d be pretty disjointed, but I’d still watch it.
I found that point interesting as well… If he (Chapelle) is their second most popular show… Then damn, Jon better be rolling in it.
Stewart is rolling in it but the $50 million figure for Chapelle is a bit misleading- a huge portion of it is supposedly back-end on the DVD sales which doesn’t apply of course to Stewart and The Daily Show. As great as the ratings for the Chapelle show are the its really the DVD sales that are the monster revenue maker here. For comparison, Battlestar Galactica gets roughly the same ratings as Chapelle but I haven’t heard anything about Ron Moore signing a $50 million contract.
Stewart is rolling in it but the $50 million figure for Chapelle is a bit misleading- a huge portion of it is supposedly back-end on the DVD sales which doesn’t apply of course to Stewart and The Daily Show. As great as the ratings for the Chapelle show are the its really the DVD sales that are the monster revenue maker here. For comparison, Battlestar Galactica gets roughly the same ratings as Chapelle but I haven’t heard anything about Ron Moore signing a $50 million contract.[/quote]
You have to factor in costs. Chapelle’s show must be cheap to produce compared to Battlestar Galactica.
The other thing about it is that there’s constantly new Daily Show being produced… usually, DVD sets come out in between seasons of a show, you buy the DVDs, and they tide you over until the next season comes out. I think TDS DVDs would be a hard sell when people can watch new episodes four nights a week.
Although I could maybe see a box set of the best of the Kilborn years selling. But then again, the Stewart Daily Show is so much better than the Kilborn Daily Show (even though that show was pretty good too) that it might still not work.
Do you even realize how long ago it was that Kilborne was doing the show? I think the time for Monica Lewinsky jokes is long past.
I’m afraid to ask but what kid of humor has the Chappelle show? I haven’t watched comedy central in years. Since MST3K left its schedule
Raunchy sketch comedy. Mediocre 80% of the time with 20% genius…
But the 20% genius is SO good that it easily takes over impressions of the show in your mind, so that you don’t even remember the bad skits.