Growing up in Lakewood, New Jersey, Art Bell was an avid comedy fan. He watched Ed Sullivan and saw Borsch Belt comedians like Alan King, and when he was in college, he became a fan of George Carlin, Robert Klein and Richard Pryor.
Eventually, when he started working, he ended up at HBO. There, he came up with the idea of creating a 24-hour channel strictly devoted to comedy.
After approaching his superiors with his concept, he was surprised when they decided to go through with it. “My favorite moment was when Michael Fuchs, chairman and chief executive officer of HBO, said, ‘Let’s give it a try,’” Bell told the Journal. “That was such an unexpected moment.”
Bell’s new book, “Constant Comedy: How I Started Comedy Central and Lost My Sense of Humor,” details how he got his start and what founding the channel was like. “I wanted to tell the story from my point of view and what I was going through as I helped put it together. Now, it’s the 30th anniversary this year as Comedy Central. It’s amazing.”
It all started in 1989, when HBO launched The Comedy Channel. It featured stand-up comedy, movie clips and original programming like “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and “Short Attention Span Theater,” hosted by a young Jon Stewart.
However, the channel got off to a shaky start and received bad reviews. Then, just a few months after the channel’s debut, Viacom introduced its own 24-hour comedy channel called Ha! After executives from Viacom and HBO met, Bell got the news that in 1991, the two rival channels were merging, and he was suddenly going to work for HBO’s biggest competitor.
In the book, Bell writes about his positive and negative experiences at both companies. While it was exciting to get his idea on air and figure out how to make it successful, he also had to deal with big personalities, like Bill Maher, who cursed Bell out over an advertising campaign for his show “Politically Incorrect,” Al Franken, who panicked when learning he had to do comedy live two hours before going on air and Dennis Miller, who accidentally broadcasted audio of himself peeing on “State of the Union: Undressed.”
While it was exciting to get his idea on air and figure out how to make it successful, he also had to deal with big personalities.
Then, when a new executive came and took over at Comedy Central, Bell was fired. He didn’t leave the entertainment business, though. Instead, he became president of Court TV and worked as a consultant for television companies. When Bell left the business altogether, he took writing courses at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, where he came up with the idea for the book.
“They were giving classes [on writing] memoir[s],” he said. “My teachers were terrific, and the classes were good. The whole process of sitting in class and reading my stuff was very effective. One day I wrote about something I did at Comedy Central, and everyone said, ‘Wow, that was cool; why don’t you write more about that?’ And I did.”
“Constant Comedy” is incredibly detailed; Bell said he has a good memory, and when he couldn’t remember something, he called his former colleagues to remind him what happened. “My wife [Carrie Livingston Bell] was always marveling at how I can remember those things. Writers, especially memoirists, have terrific memories. That comes with the territory.”
The title of the book is a line from Michael Fuchs: “It took me working at a comedy channel to lose my sense of humor.” Although Bell said that after he left comedy he didn’t want anything to do with it, “that didn’t last. I always made sure to be around people who appreciated comedy and laughter and having fun.”
Even though comedy has gotten a bad reputation over the past few years because of cancel culture, Bell believes it will go back to how it used to be. “To see the backlash, where people were standing up and walking out of comedy shows at clubs, is terrible. Lenny Bruce was arrested hundreds of times on stage for talking about things you couldn’t talk about. Was that a good thing? No. I think it will swing back eventually.”
Throughout the pandemic, Bell has been hunkering down in his Greenwich, Connecticut home with Carrie. He said that during this tough time, comedy specials and funny shows on TV have kept them both in positive spirits. And, of course, they have each other.
“My wife and I love each other, and we’re also just happy to hang out together. When one of us senses the other is down, we try to cheer the other person up. So far that’s been the game.”
Kylie Ora Lobell is a writer for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles, The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Aish, and Chabad.org and the author of the first children’s book for the children of Jewish converts, “Jewish Just Like You.”
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