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Comment by ProAm | Hacker News Reader

> For me, the stand-up specials like Dave Chapelle and Louis CK alone are huge and welcome additions, never mind the many, very good lesser known comedy specials on there

The reason there is so much standup comedy on Netflix is because it is incredibly cheap to produce. It probably costs between $50k-150k to shoot a special, comedian payout is also inexpensive in comparison and then they can stream it forever....

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Rumor is that Dave Chapelle got $60m for the three specials.

http://www.tvguide.com/news/dave-chappelle-netflix-specials-...

Dave Chapelle is an outlier. Louis CK is probably in the millions too, but most of the comedians they have specials for are not in that category.

Wow, $60M for 3 hours of work must be a new record (I know prep takes longer than that, but still).

It's not just the prep, even though that material probably took a couple of years to develop in its entirety. When they sell a special like that to Netflix they know that anyone who's even slightly interested in their work is going to watch it and so they have to retire every bit of that material. It's still a great payout, but he can't really ever use a significant amount of that routine again.

It often takes 10-15 years on the stand up circuit to get to where they are

How many other stand up comedians that put in 10-15 years pulled in $60M for 3 60 minute episodes?

About 5

Usain Bolt's entire Olympic career clocked in at just under 4 minutes...

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