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'South Park' is a hit, but Comedy Central can't be a one-joke wonder. Will it stay on the laugh track?
HERE'S A DIRTY LITTLE secret: Doug Herzog can't tell a joke. "I really am bad," he says. There's nothing wrong with that, necessarily-except that for the past two and a half years Herzog, 39, has been president of Comedy Central. People have expectations. "My biggest frustration in this job is that everybody is like, `Hey, Doug! Comedy Central! Tell me a joke!' and I never have a joke."
For years, the same might have been said of Comedy Central. Sure, it had jokes, but the network's programming never quite lived up to the promise of its name. "They'd run a set that you did at a club in Jersey in 1987 for 24 hours a day, along with, like, `Mary Tyler Moore' reruns," says comedian Denis Leary. "Who the f-wants to watch that?" Not nearly as many people as are drawn...