Comedy Central (Germany)

**Comedy Central** is German entertainment television network owned by Viacom International Media Networks Germany. The channel broadcasts series related to comedy, animation programmings from American and British imports.

## History

One of the first shows on **Viva Zwei** was ***Geschmackssache***, a German TV show that featured singers from around the world. The singer would talk about himself or herself and would show some of their favorite music videos to the viewers. **Viva Zwei**'s logo at the time was a logo in a transverse wave form similar to the Viva logo with a Roman numeral 2 (II) sign beside it, and it was put into the upper right corner of the screen. In mid 1996, the logo was changed to a logo similar of a plus sign with the uppercase word "ZWEI" beside it, and it was put into the lower left corner of the screen.

The 1995–1996 original **Viva Zwei** channel (more known as **Viva II** at the time) aired mostly classic 60s, 70s and 80s music as well as current 90s pop music and shows like ***Das War...*** (translated into the English language: That Was..., for example: ***Das War 1964*** (That Was 1964), ***Das War 1974*** (That Was 1974), ***Das War 1984*** (That Was 1984), ***Das War 1994*** (That Was 1994) etc.) and ***Geschmackssache***. At this time, Viva was the mainstream channel for shows.

In 1997, more programming started to be aired such as **2Rock**, **2Step**, **Fast Forward**, **Trendspotting**, **Wah2** and **Zwobot**. The channel now focused more on current, alternative styles of music, mainly alternative and indie rock, but also metal, alternative hip hop and electronic music, and started becoming a place for lesser known bands that were not aired on MTV or Viva to get their music heard, as well as airing music from bigger name stars such as Depeche Mode.

By 2001, the channel became more popular, but its parent company, Time Warner, was losing money; **Viva Zwei** was generating losses and was not popular enough to survive. In mid-summer 2001, it was announced that **Viva Zwei** would be shut down.

The shutdown occurred on January 7, 2002. The final video on the network was a sendoff video, a special thanks to **Viva Zwei**'s hosts, a music video from ***Zwobot***, and Mr. Explosion from ***Zwobot***. Then, **Viva Zwei** switched full time into **Viva Plus**, a channel dedicated to mainstream pop music. This was considered to be a loss to the music world by fans of the old channel as well as music personalities, because it eliminated a medium for lesser known bands to be recognized.

The station's initial claim was to become the "CNN of music television". The programme was dominated by information treadmills, so-called "crawls", and the hourly ***Viva Plus News***. In addition, there were correspondents in London, Los Angeles, Berlin and Hamburg who reported daily on current topics from the cities. The daily programme ***Cologne Day*** was also broadcast from the **Viva Plus** studios in Cologne, to which various musicians, among others, were invited. Further correspondents were planned for the summer, reporting from Barcelona, Munich, Frankfurt am Main and Tokyo. However, the station's idea did not seem to work out and nothing came of further plans, as the expected group sales were not achieved and the largest single shareholder AOL Time Warner put greater commitment into a new concept - that of a pure clip station, like the then competitor MTV 2 Pop.

**Viva Plus** was then radically transformed and the concept of an interactive channel, which had been pursued to the end, followed, in which viewers were involved through tele-voting. From then on, the **Viva Plus** programme was characterised by the interactive programme ***Get the Clip*** and its variations grouped by musical genre. ***Get the Clip*** was a kind of playlist that could be compiled by the viewer via SMS or interactive voice response (IVR). If the vote was sent by SMS, a short message could also be sent, which was then shown in the TV programme.

The channel was then optically adapted to the main Viva channel. The programme scheme slowly recovered and was gradually expanded with new unmoderated formats before Viva Media AG was taken over by Viacom in 2005 and most of these formats were discontinued. Recently, three different call-in programmes were broadcast on **Viva Plus** in the style of 9 Live, accounting for up to 40% of daily broadcasting time.

**Comedy Central** was licensed by the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia (LfM), which is also the supervising State media authority for the channel. On 24 November 2006, the license of **Viva Plus** was changed to **Comedy Central**. Due to this, it got a license valid until 20 March 2010. Viacom initially tried to establish the channel independently as a 24-hour network. In 15 December 2008, however, **Comedy Central** started to timeshare its frequency with Nickelodeon and therefore reduced its broadcast time to 9:30 hours, from 20:15 until 5:45. Viacom previously launched a comedy timeshared channel using that same timeslot named Nick Comedy, which lasted from 2005 to 2006. It was shut down in favour of **Comedy Central**.

On 1 March 2010, **Comedy Central** switched its aspect ratio to 16:9 and began airing its programming schedule in widescreen.

From 1 October 2014, **Comedy Central** shared air-time with Viva, due to launch of Nicknight, late night block equivalent to American Nick@Nite until 31 December 2018 when Viva ceased with **Comedy Central** finally broadcasting 24/7.

## Programmings

### Original programmings

* ***Die 100 allerdümmsten Clips der Welt***
* ***Badesalz***
* ***CC:N***
* ***Comedy Central presents***
* ***C-Cup***
* ***Der Comedy Sketch-Mix***
* ***Die Dümmsten…***
* ***Fat For Fun***
* ***Frag den Lippe***
* ***Hot Spots***
* ***Join the Club***
* ***Kargar trifft den Nagel***
* ***Mundstuhl***
* ***NightWash***
* ***Para-Comedy***
* ***Roast Battle***
* ***Schmidt Comedy Show***
* ***Standup 3000***
* ***Total Lustig: Die besten Clips mit Ruth Moschner***
* ***u.A.w.g.: um Antwort wird gebeten***
* ***Ulmen.tv***

### Acquired programmings

* Glitch Techs
* The Loud House
* Supernoobs
* Harvey Girls Forever!
* Ollie's Pack
* Game Shakers
* The Haunted Hathaways
* Harvey Beaks
* Twelve Forever
* Hilda
* Pinky Malinky
* Pig Goat Banana Cricket
* ***Spongebob Squarepants***
* The Adventures of Kid Danger
* School of Rock
* Grojband
* ***Teen Titans Go!***
* ***ThunderCats Roar***

## Logos

First logo (1995-1996)Second logo (1996-2002)Third logo (2002)Fourth logo (2002-2004)Fifth logo (2004-2007)Sixth logo (2007-2011)Seventh logo (2011-2018)HD logo (2011-2018)Current logo (2019-present)HD logo (2019-present)
## External links

* Official website