Netflix’s Stand-Up Comedy Domination Is Being Led By Lisa Nishimura and Robbie Praw

Netflix owns stand-up comedy now.

That’s not a particularly hot take for 2017, no matter what you’ve already read everywhere else. In all fairness to all comers, previous dominators of the domain – namely HBO and Comedy Central – failed to keep pace with an unparalleled boom in the stand-up industry. They’re not even second choice for some comedians these days. That rank belongs to Seeso, the upstart streaming platform launched by NBCUniversal at the start of 2016.

While IFC, FX and TBS have encroached on their cable, broadcast and streaming competitors for the mantle of comedy supremacy, none of those networks really have cared enough about stand-up itself, even if they have devoted millions of dollars to developing sitcoms and talk shows for those comedians. The essential truths behind Netflix’s ballsy blitz to become the first choice for the best stand-up comedians are threefold: 1) In an increasingly On Demand world, Netflix’s platform is the only one built specifically for it; 2) Nobody can match Netflix’s cold hard cash offers; and 3) The power of personalities like Lisa Nishimura (VP of Original Documentary and Comedy) and Robbie Praw (Director, Original Standup Comedy Programming and former VP of programming for the influential Just For Laughs festival) to signal a safe space for creatives who want to avoid censorship and other meddling in the making of their art.

Netflix actually started making inroads in comedy back when they still relied on red envelopes and the United States Postal Service for their business model. In 2006, Netflix produced Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion, when only die-hard comedy fans knew who Galifianakis was. Ted Sarandos executive produced the Netflix exclusive DVD with Galifianakis. As Louis CK told me in February: “Netflix made a great offer for two specials. It was easy to say yes to. Netflix has become a central place for stand-up specials the way HBO used to be. And their reach is obviously huge. Also I like Ted. He has been a stand-up fan since way back.”

CK first met Sarandos back in 2004 when the Netflix chief was following The Comedians of Comedy Tour that included Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt and Maria Bamford. In 2016, Oswalt won the Emmy for his Netflix special, Talking for Clapping, while Bamford stars in Netflix’s Lady Dynamite and has her own new stand-up special, Old Baby, debuting there May 2, 2017.

Back in the 1980s, HBO owned stand-up comedy during that generational boom under similar circumstances. Home Box Office could pay more money for specials they could repeat often and without any censorship. And its original programming chief then, Chris Albrecht, had come to HBO after earlier buying management of the original Improvisation comedy club in New York City from founder Budd Friedman. Albrecht co-founded Comic Relief, the biggest all-star comedy fundraiser of the 1980s, as well as the most prestigious annual comedy festival in America each winter in Aspen from 1995-2007. When Albrecht left HBO in late 2007, comedy immediately became less prestigious there.

HBO still produces stand-up specials, particularly for talent associated with the network (see promoting Pete Holmes in Crashing last December, or Silicon Valley‘s T.J. Miller’s new hour this June), but only released three such hours all of last year. Netflix put out two dozen, and vows to release at least double that amount in 2017.

And while the HBO Go and HBO Now apps let you peek into some of its back catalog of stand-up, it pales in comparison to Netflix’s stand-up archives. The same holds true if you look up Showtime Anytime. As Comedy Central’s collection has grown over the years, it has become less and less frequent to actually see a new stand-up special repeated on TV more than once in its debut weekend, and then who knows if you can actually find it online or on the CC app thereafter. Maybe you will, perhaps you won’t.

“Comics love Netflix because once it’s up, it’s up,” Jim Norton told me. “You don’t have to worry about some idiot choosing to shelve the special for a puppet show featuring talking dildos.”

Unless the comedian gets the license back to re-sell the special. In which case, countless comedians have told me over the past few years of seeing their live draws on the road growing only after Netflix has picked up their old hours of material. Of course, now Netflix has become so synonymous with stand-up that’s it’s akin to Kleenex with tissues or Xerox with copiers. As Dave Rath, a longtime talent manager for the likes of Oswalt, Holmes and many other comedians at Generate, told me about his clients’ experiences: “Fans would come up to them and go I love your Netflix special, and they’d say I wasn’t on Netflix, so people didn’t even know where they were watching it.”

But it has become increasingly likely that if you’re watching stand-up comedians you already love, it’s happening on Netflix.

Even if you’re not loving the two new stand-up hours released by Dave Chappelle, you need to remember that Chappelle himself wasn’t planning anyone seeing them, preferring to keep them locked in his personal vault – until Netflix paid him $60 million for Deep in the Heart of Texas, The Art of Spin and a third, brand-new hour. Lisa Nishimura, Netflix’s aforementioned VP of original documentary and comedy, helped make that deal happen. It’s no coincidence that she was at The Comedy Store to watch Chris Rock prep his 2016 Academy Awards monologue the night before the Oscars, that Chappelle ditched a gig to be there, too, and that she got both Chappelle and Rock to leave HBO for her platform. It’s also not much of a coincidence that Nishimura recruited Robbie Praw a year ago, just as all of these A-list comedy deals began coming through the pipeline, to head up the stand-up comedy division.

Nishimura told The Hollywood Reporter last year that she can justify Netflix’s big-budget expenses for stand-up because, “For us, it’s about having enough of a global audience and anticipated engagement that we can get behind all of these projects.” And stand-up comedians have proven over the past year to drive new subscriptions for Netflix across the globe.

“Working with them was incredibly easy, they sent the money on time, made only requests not demands and did everything they said they’d do. And they reach 190 countries at the same time,” Norton told me. “Robbie (Praw) I’m sure has something to do with it because of his great reputation among comics. Honestly they were amazing to work with.”

Praw had risen the ranks at Just For Laughs, home of the largest comedy industry celebration each summer in Montreal as well as putting on past fests in Toronto, Chicago and Sydney, to become its chief talent booker before leaving for Netflix a year ago. His former colleague at JFL, (Director of Industry & Special Events Programming and Strategic Partner Development) Paul Ronca told me that “Robbie, more than any other person in this business, has a great nose for comedy and a great relationship with comedians and agents/managers. Everyone loves and remembers Robbie after they meet him the first time.”

Bart Coleman, supervising producer at Comedy Central’s @midnight, has worked in similar trenches as Praw as a talent booker – and fun fact disclosure, shares a birthday with Praw and myself – considering him “a valuable sounding board.” Coleman added: “Netflix is lucky to have someone like Robbie who truly appreciates the craft of stand-up and fosters strong talent relations.”

The real question, then, may not be answering why and how Netflix dominated stand-up comedy, but what that means for everyone else? Not just in terms of the TV/streaming networks, but also in terms of the talent.

“Now with Robbie in there, and how much money they’re spending on big names,” Rath said, “for me, it’s the phenomenon of dealing with every artist thinks they need to be on Netflix.”

And yet, Netflix doesn’t and won’t accept every single comedy special on its way to complete domination.

“When they pass, we’re all relegated to figuring out where to put it,” Rath said.

Comedy Central still looks for talent they can develop into series stars; despite losing The Daily Show host Trevor Noah’s 2017 special to Netflix, its breakout correspondent Roy Wood Jr. did release his first hour on Comedy Central and told me it meant a lot for him to make that happen. HBO maintains a premium brand of prestige still, but more so for comedians who have been in the game since before the boom. And Showtime has developed its own new relationships over the years, from Shaquille O’Neals traveling comedy tours, to the talent for its upcoming summer series, I’m Dying Up Here, to a new working relationship with Amazon’s Audible.

But all eyes are on Netflix now.

Dave Rath put it best: “Netflix really drives the market, and everybody else reacts.”

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.