‘Chappelle’s Show gives boost to Comedy Central

Comedy Central is smiling about a ratings spike this year.

“Chappelle’s Show,” the sketch comedy starring Dave Chappelle, is the channel’s biggest hit since “South Park,” which put the network on the map in 1998.

“The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” fresh off an Emmy win, reached a ratings peak in May and has drawn new attention to the channel.

“Reno 911!,” the goofy “Cops” parody, debuted its second season last month with 2 million viewers, its second-best outing.

And the crudely irreverent “South Park” — in its eighth season — hit recent highs, with seven new spring episodes averaging 3.8 million viewers (still below its late-‘90s peak).

All told, the channel’s prime-time audience averages 821,000 viewers this year — a 28 percent gain that makes it among the fastest-growing cable networks.

Inheriting this good fortune is new Comedy Central president Doug Herzog, a former MTV executive who bought “South Park” while running the channel from 1995 to 1999, left for top stints at Fox and USA Network and returned to his old post in May.

“I’ll hold our schedule up, comedy-wise, to anyone else’s,” he says. “We’ve got a bunch of great shows all firing on many cylinders, and the cumulative effect is to provide more momentum.”

Herzog is trying to find new avenues for growth: broadening the channel’s appeal to win more women (now just 36 percent of its prime-time audience); promoting the brand at comedy clubs and on radio; considering a new spinoff digital-cable channel focused on stand-up comedy; and expanding programming further into late night.

“Prime time for their viewers starts at 10, because they’re younger and that’s when they hunker down in front of the TV,” says Shari Anne Brill of media buyer Carat USA.

The channel was born in 1990 as a marriage of two rivals, Viacom’s Ha! and Time Warner’s Comedy Channel. Both companies jointly owned Comedy Central, but neither took much interest in devoting resources to it.

But Viacom acquired full ownership last year, parked Comedy Central in its MTV Networks stable and now plans a more aggressive push for the network, which competes for the same young male viewers as siblings MTV and Spike.

The first priority was re-upping Stewart, now signed through the 2008 presidential election. “South Park” is already on tap for at least two more seasons. Now Herzog is in the midst of negotiating a two-year deal to renew “Chappelle’s Show,” credited with expanding Comedy Central’s black audience from 7 percent of the total to 20 percent.

The channel also has found modest success with “Reno” and “Crank Yankers,” in which comedians make prank phone calls and puppets act out the results.