How do you get Americans to care about a horrible disease that they’re likely to never see the effects of. Well, getting a bunch of very funny people together and just letting them talk is a good start. That’s what the Malaria No More organization is trying with their new “Comedy Fights Malaria” campaign. They’ve gathered everyone from Ted Danson to Elizabeth Banks to Rob Riggle and made a series of videos that are as entertaining as the subject is serious. This quickly makes the videos about a 100 times more watchable than another “We Are the World” remake and will hopefully lead to more donations.

As a fan of sketch comedy, it’s always seemed strange to me that a channel called Comedy Central didn’t produce more sketch shows. Sure, they’ve run old episodes of all the past greats but, asides from Chappelle’s Show and Exit 57, there hasn’t been much in the way of original sketch. That’s certainly changed in the past year or so with last year’s Important Things with Demetri Martin and the upcoming This Show Will Get You High. Mediaite was invited to check out the pilot of their latest, Nick Swardson‘s Pretend Time, which premiered this week, and, while it wasn’t perfect, it definitely shows promise.

So! “Ronna & Beverly” aired last night. Did you watch? Did anyone? Did the army of Twitter followers of comedy tastemakers like Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Joel Stein, Paul Feig, Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle, Paul Scheer and Diablo Cody — remember to set their DVRs? Anyone subscribing to the theory of Twitter as a cross-platform [...]

What do you do if your TV pilot finally gets made — in the middle of a media meltdown and the worst recession in years? And what do you do if it isn’t picked up, but at the last minute, randomly, gets scheduled to air? In the olden days (read: a few years ago), you [...]

I’ve written before about Funny or Die as an essential platform for established artists looking to present a different side of themselves, send a message or just have ridiculous fun. But what I realized just now after clicking on a video from their newsletter is that they are the only platform — besides maybe YouPorn [...]