Comedy Central has centralized the departments in charge of its programming delivery options, effectively tearing down a wall that existed between digital content and linear programming. The end game is to more directly serve an end user who doesn't differentiate between IP-enabled digital content and linear.
"We had a digital team that made digital content and digital marketing and scheduled the digital platforms, and then... we realized that our audience doesn't think of it that way. And we shouldn't, either," Comedy Central Network President Michele Ganeless told Adweek.
While customers might be better targeted with a merged offering, the move leaves some questions for advertising agencies, which have their own siloed organizations. Closer cooperation between the groups should mitigate those concerns, Gibbs Haljun, managing director of media investment at GroupM, told the publication.
"You're going to have video that lives on three different plans. It's going to live on print in my iPad editions, it's going to live on TV, and it's going to live on digital video," he said. "Everybody… has to work closely together."
Ganeless described the Comedy Central move as centralizing scheduling on different platforms. The move can be made, she said, because "comedy travels well."
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- Adweek carried this story
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