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Comedy Central to host five-day comedy festival on Vine and Twitter

Comedy Central to host five-day comedy festival on Vine and Twitter

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mel brooks carl reiner (shutterstock)
mel brooks carl reiner (shutterstock)

The New York Times reports that Comedy Central will hold a five-day comedy festival almost entirely on Twitter. Comedians including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Amy Schumer, and others will post video snippets to Vine, along with jokes in tweets accompanied by the #ComedyFest hashtag. The festival will begin with a live stream of a real-world panel discussion in Los Angeles with Brooks, Reiner, and director Judd Apatow. On Tuesday, comedian Steve Agee will host a "Vine dining" party with videos of six-second stories.

Comedy Central's partnership with Twitter expands the micro-blogging service's efforts to blend new and old media. As the Times reports, Comedy Central also plans to push for more digital interaction with its programming, and will introduce a free app called CC: Stand-Up that's intended to look like a cable channel for stand-up comedy with videos of routines. The Times says the app will include a recommendation engine that will introduce users to new comedians. "One of these days we will be ambivalent about where people watch Comedy Central," the channel's vice president for programming and multiplatform strategy told the Times — an indication that executives are looking at platforms the same way that some of its creators do. That includes South Park's Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who have said that they "don't even know where or how people watch our show."