Spend some time in the comedy world and you will hear complaints about Netflix, which has established itself as the most important home for stand-up for nearly a decade.
Among them: The streaming service oversaturated the market with specials. Its algorithm favors the famous more than the funny. It platforms transphobia. It pays women less than men. Its promotion and marketing doesn’t do enough. It refuses to share information about audiences with comedians. After tossing around big contracts to superstars, it’s getting increasingly stingy with other artists. There’s more. But the kvetching always ends with a simple question: What’s the better alternative?
Amazon dipped its toe into streaming stand-up specials, but not much more than that. Apple has sat it out. Peacock has a modest slate, as does the new streaming site Dropout, which released specials this year by Adam Conover and Courtney Pauroso. HBO Max has done the best job lately of positioning itself as the cool alternative with hours from Jerrod Carmichael, Alex Edelman and Ramy Youssef.
But no large competitor has mounted a serious challenge to Netflix. Until now.
Disney now enters the stand-up game in a big way right after its streaming business reported making a profit for the first time. Along with considerable resources, Disney, under the Hulu banner, has ordered up over a dozen specials — a bunch of them from comics who recently worked for Netflix, including some major stars (Bill Burr, Sebastian Maniscalco) and rising ones (Ralph Barbosa). And most important, they have a coherent vision, a counterprogramming strategy.
Hulu will roll out one special every month. The aim is to turn each one into an event, leaning on the considerable marketing resources of Disney. Jim Gaffigan kicked off the slate with his new hour called “Skinny,” a characteristically funny, family-friendly set of jokes griping about, among other subjects, religion and kids. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the hour is that Gaffigan, who has long specialized in jokes about overeating, has lost a significant amount of weight, thanks to an appetite suppressant.
In the coming months, Ilana Glazer’s “Human Magic” and Roy Wood Jr.’s “Lonely Flowers” will follow.
Craig Erwich, the president of the Disney Television Group, said that it’s good for comedy that Netflix has competition, and that he is focused on “curation, not volume.”
“We’re not trying to do, you know, a hundred things,” Erwich said on a Zoom call. “We’re trying to do a few carefully selected things that we really believe in. That, I think, quite frankly, helps quality control.”
He says he’s open to sharing viewership data with comedians, something that Netflix has hesitated to do. This frustrated some comics who were hoping to understand their audiences, for the purposes of where to tour or how to negotiate their next deal. He also promises to use old-fashioned marketing muscle. “We don’t believe that it’s just up to, you know, the algorithm to kind of get you at the right time in the right place,” he said.
The last time a major player tried to compete with Netflix was in 2019, when Amazon Prime rolled out a plan for specials. As it happens, they also started with Gaffigan. The comic says this effort feels different. “From a promotional standpoint, there’s no comparison,” he said over Zoom. “I was grateful for the opportunity, but it felt more like an experiment, whereas Hulu has a 12-month to two-year plan.”
The lineup at Hulu is heavy on popular club and theater acts like Zarna Garg, Andrew Santino, Atsuko Okatsuka and Matteo Lane. Asked for his dream get, Erwich points to the duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who had been touring a live comedy show.
Hulu’s challenge is getting consumers to develop new habits. But there is also skepticism about the marriage between the family-friendly brand of Disney and the sometimes controversial art of stand-up. When asked if he would program Dave Chappelle’s “The Closer,” in which transgender people were the primary focus, Erwich said: “It’s probably not what we would want to do.”
More broadly, he added that he would approach controversial comedy this way: “What we would consider is, Does it feel gratuitous and purposefully hateful or provocative? Or purposely controversial? No, we’d probably stay away from that.”
“That has nothing to do with Disney,” he said. “We want these comedies to be enjoyed by as many people as possible, and we don’t feel the need to purposely court controversy to get attention.”
Netflix doesn’t seem to mind controversy. And it has drawn huge audiences for live events like the comedy roast of Tom Brady and a Chris Rock special addressing being slapped by Will Smith. But as the platform has become more established, it often appears to be competing with the vast output of YouTube more than with any traditional producer.
Several years ago, Netflix started licensing completed specials from comics. This kept costs down (comedians still paid for production and marketing) but allowed Netflix to keep its volume high. The comic Chris Distefano, who has gained a big following in recent years, did one of those deals with Netflix. But for his next hour, “It’s Just Unfortunate,” he signed with Hulu for a February release.
Explaining the move, Distefano pointed to marketing and promotion, saying Hulu “felt more like being part of their family.” He added in a later message: “It’s an honor to be on the same network as ‘The Bear’ since that’s what I’m known as in most communities.”
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