Mark Burnett gets into the comedy webseries business with AOL for shorts based on CliffsNotes

In case you thought everybody already was in the online game of producing short comedy videos, well, now count big-time "reality" show producer Mark Burnett in, too.

A press release this morning announced that Burnett had agreed to a deal with AOL.com in partnership with John Wiley & Sons and Coalition Films to interpret Wiley's CliffsNotes¬Æ Literature Guides into comedy shorts.

“CliffsNotes is perfect for the short form production format of the web,” said Mark Burnett, president of One Three. “Young Americans are going to love these irreverent, comedic, educational and entertaining versions of the great books.”

This all reminds me of John Mulaney's joke about the New York Post being a newspaper as produced by people who read a better newspaper and then tried to relay the news to you. So instead of a video based on Shakespeare or Dickens, we'll get a video of a dumbed-down outline of Billy Shakes and that Tale of Two Cities guy. OK. Whatevs.

AOL also noted in the release that it has more than 20 other partnership deals in place already, including agreements with Ellen DeGeneres, Marlo Thomas, Next New Networks, Ben Silverman's Electus, Heidi Klum, Endemol and Vuguru.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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