Comedy Headlines for 1/10/13

What’s happening in the comedy world now…

  • Early ratings for Jimmy Kimmel’s first night of Jimmy Kimmel Live in the 11:35 p.m. start time placed him ahead of both Letterman and Leno? Yes and no. Kimmel pulled in 3.097 million viewers Tuesday night compared to 2.882 million for Letterman and 3.274 million for Leno. They ranked in the same order for ages 18-49, too.
  • Early ratings for Cougar Town‘s debut on TBS, on the other hand, saw it attract only 2.2 million viewers on Tuesday, 1.3 million ages 18-49. That’s less than the audiences who turned out to watch new 2012 TBS sitcoms Sullivan & Son and Men At Work.
  • IAWTV (International Academy of Web TV) award winners, announced Tuesday night in Las Vegas during ceremonies timed to the annual CES convention, included the following comedy winners: Grace Helbig (best host and best hosted taped series, for Daily Grace on My Damn Channel); Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist Channel (best online channel); Bill Maher (best live event, for his stand-up special on Yahoo!, “CrazyStupidPolitics”); Squaresville (best comedy series); Sean Becker (best directing, for My Gimpy Life); Teal Sherer Teal (best female performance in a comedy, My Gimpy Life); Jeff Lewis (best male performance in a comedy, The Jeff Lewis 5-Minute Comedy Hour); Matt Enlow (best writing in comedy, for Squaresville); and Rhett & Link (best variety series).
  • Mixology has moved to the pilot stage at ABC. The single-cam from writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore (The Hangover, The Change-Up) explores a varied group of singles looking for love during a single night.
  • Paul Feig has a first-look movie development deal with FOX, via his Feigco Entertainment shingle.
  • Aisha Tyler will release a collection of essays, Self-Inflicted Wounds, this summer via It Books, an imprint of HarperCollins. Her first book, Swerve, came out in 2004.
  • Fans of sitcom panels should mark their calendars for the following gatherings of funny TV people at the Paley Centers in Los Angeles and New York City. In NYC: An Evening with Fred Armisen (Feb. 21); the writers of 30 Rock (Feb. 27).And in L.A.: Community (March 5); The New Normal (March 6); The Mindy Project (March 8); New Girl (March 11): The Big Bang Theory (March 13); 2 Broke Girls (March 14).

From the TCA press tour:

FX: FX President John Landgraf is looking to add three new comedy series to the channel’s programming. Moreover, he said a 10th season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is likely to happen, and that the 90 new episodes of Anger Management won’t be spread out long — two years, 45 episodes each year.

NetflixArrested Development will return with 14 episodes in May, all released at once. Jason Bateman appears in all of the episodes, each of which focuses on a different member of the Bluth family and how they all went their separate ways following the third-season finale on FOX. It’ll wrap up with a family reunion, to set up the proposed feature film.

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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