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Comedy Central Founder Art Bell on Creativity, Business and Leadership
Art Bell is a writer and former media executive known for creating, building, and managing successful cable television channels. He was educated at Swarthmore, The University of Michigan, and The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania.
He started at HBO as the Director of New Business Development and in 1988 founded the Comedy Channel which became Comedy Central. He then served as Senior Vice President for Programming and Marketing for Comedy Central, which became the incubator for talent like Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell, and where Art discovered Bill Maher and Jon Stewart. He worked with other notables such as Dennis Miller — all with various, interesting, South Park-esque experiences, that we talk about in this episode.
Art moved to CourtTV as President and Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for the operation of all aspects of the channel during a turnaround period until its sale to Turner Networks in 2006 — which was one of the most successful brand evolutions in cable television.
Art was a founding partner of Scalar Media Partners and handled a range of clients and…
