This image was lost some time after publication.


We realize that it's customary to trumpet one's achievements by taking out full-page ads in Variety, but Comedy Central could be a little more careful about how it sucks up to the talent; while they're understandably proud about the early success of The Sarah Silverman Program, they shouldn't be so freely offering access to their proprietary methods to their rivals. Now that competing networks know the key ingredient in Silverman's secret chocolate sauce, soon everyone from Bravo to Lifetime will offer their own, inevitably inferior variations (FX will screw it up by attempting to explore how schizophrenia impacts a gruff proctologist's scat-obsession) on the formula, littering basic cable with shows in which female comics sing cute songs about blinding their mothers with various feces-encrusted implements.

[Image: Variety]