MONTREAL – Thanks to an “unprecedented” number of domestic and international broadcast partners, Just For Laughs Television announced Wednesday that it will produce more than 40 hours of original programming from this year’s recently-wrapped Just For Laughs Festival.
JFL Television has announced partnerships with The Comedy Network, CBC, HBO, Corus, Citytv, Comedy Central UK, Australia’s Seven Network, and others to broadcast some of the performances from the 31st annual comedy festival.
This year’s domestic productions include:
- The Comedy Network: The Just For Laughs: All Access series returns for another season with 13 one-hour specials, and 26 half-hour episodes, featuring comedians Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers, Jay Baruchel, Dane Cook, Saturday Night Live’s Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan, Chris Hardwick and more.
- The Comedy Network has also commissioned three Just For Laughs: Masters comedy specials, starring festival legends Jeremy Hotz, Danny Bhoy, and Tommy Tiernan, as well as a one-hour special to be filmed at the 2013 Just For Laughs Comedy Tour stop in Calgary this fall.
- CBC Television: four one-hour multi-performer comedy specials, hosted by Joan Rivers, Eddie Izzard, Kristen Chenoweth, and Kathy Griffin, respectively.
- The Movie Network/Movie Central: The Funny As Hell franchise returns for a fourth season, consisting of eight, half-hour episodes hosted by Jon Dore. The festival will also produce a multi-performer comedy special titled Whitney Cummings’ Bleep Show.
- Citytv: A 60-minute special, The Montreal Experience, hosted by Vanessa Matsui (from the original Citytv comedy Seed), and starring Mike Ward, Jimmy Carr, Godfrey, Bob Marley, DeAnne Smith, and Jessica Kirson. The highlights local places and events that these comedians love about the city.
- Internationally, Australia’s largest terrestrial broadcaster Seven Network has commissioned a Just For Laughs Festival production for each of the next two years, produced by the GNWTV Group and Just For Laughs. The first installment, hosted by Aussie star Wil Anderson, will be broadcast later this year.
- Last month, the GNWTV Group and Just For Laughs also produced a special for Seven Network hosted by Adam Hills. The show features some of the top Australian comedians from the archives of the Montreal Festival’s 30-year history, including Dame Edna, Carl Barron Dave Hughes, and Rove McManus, and others.
- The festival is also producing two new specials for Comedy Central UK; a half-hour special for Comedy Central Africa that features two of South Africa’s hottest comics, Loyiso Gola and Riaad Moosa; and licensed stand-up specials from previous festivals to broadcasters in New Zealand, India, Asia, and in dozens of other countries worldwide.
