A couple of weeks ago we told you about how Louis C.K. was going to shun HBO, Showtime and Comedy Central and sell his new stand-up special directly to fans on his website for $5 via Paypal. We applauded this decision and marveled that more entertainers with significant followings online don’t do more of this sort of thing. Louis explained his thinking to the New York Times thusly…
Asked in a phone interview on Friday morning why he was not bringing the special to a traditional cable television network, Louis C. K. said: “To me, I flip the question over: Why should I go through a cable network when I can just give it directly to the people who want to see it? It’s so much easier, and it’s an interesting experiment.”
…
“HBO used to be the thing,” Louis C. K. said. “It used to be called an HBO special, even if you had a special on Showtime – people would call it your HBO special. But HBO gave up that. They don’t do it anymore. I offered them ‘Hilarious,’ to broadcast, and they said, ‘Well, we don’t do any business with you. You don’t have a show on HBO, so we don’t have a reason to promote you that way.’”
Showtime, he said, “was really nice but they don’t really push stuff, they just kind of stick it on.” And Comedy Central is “a weird place – they show too many commercials and they cut all the cursing out.”
So there you go — December 10th it is. BTW, I went to the taping of the special at the Beacon Theater earlier this month and it was funny as hell, just as you’d expect. The man is in the zone right now. Don’t miss this.