SuperDeluxe Sinks into Adult Swim
This is no joke. PaidContent wrote last night that Turner will fold comedy site SuperDeluxe into Adult Swim and lay off much of the SuperDeluxe staff. Turner sent us the following statement this morning:
“Effective immediately, we will begin transitioning the content of Super Deluxe.com to Adult Swim.com and merge the operation of both sites. This move allows us to grow more strategically and create a richer, stronger platform that builds on Adult Swim’s number-one position with young adults.”
The move isn’t a surprising one (we predicted it back in November) given that Adult Swim was a much stronger, edgier brand for Turner. Why compete against yourself when you’re also trying to fend off the likes of College Humor, Funny or Die and Comedy Central? Not to mention upstarts like My Damn Channel and 60Frames and all the sitcoms the network is putting online.
Adult Swim has already been creating Internet-friendly entertainment for years. Shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Frisky Dingo were animated, which does well online, and episodes were only 11 to 15 minutes long. Those run times aren’t exactly “snack” sized, but they’re short enough to be enjoyed in one sitting (while being long enough to work on oldteevee).
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SuperDeluxe put up a good fight, but it just never caught on with audiences. Early on in its life it signed up just about any comedian or sketch comedy group with a web site. Unfortunately with comedy, quantity does not equal quality.
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Chris – Quantity certainly doesn’t equal quality, but Super Deluxe was/is producing some of the best online original content. Have you seen ‘Layers,’ ‘Maria Bamford,’ Brad Neely’s shows, or Bob Odenkirk’s stuff? It’s fantastic.
Most of their problem was that they’re basically the same thing as Adult Swim and appealing to the same demo, but I also think that distribution had something to do with it. They let very little of their content live off their site (i.e. their YouTube channel only has 26 videos).
If they went with the super distribution model of 60Frames, MyDamnChannel, NextNewNetworks shows, etc., they would’ve had a ton more viewers and possibly made internet stars out of some of their content creators.
If some episodes of ‘Professor Brothers’ were able to attract 100,000+ views on a superdeluxe.com that gets 300,000 visitors a month, those things would’ve gone gangbusters on sites with more traffic.
Josh on May 8th, 2008 at 9:20 am - Permalink
“If they went with the super distribution model of 60Frames, MyDamnChannel, NextNewNetworks shows, etc., they would’ve had a ton more viewers and possibly made internet stars out of some of their content creators.”
Amen.
Ben on May 8th, 2008 at 3:07 pm - Permalink
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