The future of comedy distribution is here and it’s coming from, of all people, Lewis Black. The 64-year old comedian’s ninth stand-up special, Lewis Black: Old Yeller-Live At The Borgata, will be the first live comedy special to air as a pay-per-view event simultaneously on all cable, satellite, and telco platforms. The show will be taped in Atlantic City on August 24th at 9:30 p.m. ET, but Black fans across the country can watch it live from the comfort of their own homes (assuming they have Xfinity, Time Warner Cable, Cox Communications, DirecTV, Dish, Cablevision, Charter Communications, AT&T U-verse, or Verizon FiOS).
In a September 2012 interview with The A.V. Club, Black spoke about the difficulties of keeping his political and social comedy topical:
“This special [In God We Rust], which I did a year and half ago and is just now seeing the light of day, we shot it and put it together quickly, and it took forever to get it out. This is where the technology eludes me, which is how to release something so it’s close to the timeframe of the special and the things I’m talking about. I said stuff 10 years ago that I think applies more now than it did then. Some of the stuff that I did here still applies, but you want it to be within that timeframe, and you’ve got half an audience that will watch it on a computer and half that won’t, because my audience is basically between 15 and 90. That, to me, is the big question now, and I can’t figure it out.”
Apparently Black has figured it out, and the answer is simulcasting.