Senior Vice President, COMEDY CENTRAL Live Entertainment
Mitch Fried is senior vice president, COMEDY CENTRAL Live Entertainment, a business division of COMEDY CENTRAL that focuses on building upon the channel's leadership position in the live comedy industry through stand-up tours, comedy festivals, performance DVDs and CDs.
In this position Fried spearheads the channel's efforts to maximize live performance exposure and revenue across already established business lines and seeks to expand the business partnerships between COMEDY CENTRAL and the talent community through overall package deals with top comedians that could encompass any combination of a nationwide tour, an on-air special, a DVD release and a CD release. In doing so, Fried works closely with other COMEDY CENTRAL divisions, including the Grammy® Award-winning COMEDY CENTRAL Records®, COMEDY CENTRAL Home Entertainment® and the channel's development, programming and acquisitions teams.
In addition, Fried also oversees the channel's successful COMEDY CENTRAL Live! stand-up touring business, which, since he launched it just over six years ago, has sold over 1.5 million tickets to performances at theaters, colleges and casinos nationwide, generating over $60 million in box office receipts, and its strategic partnerships in the comedy festival world, including COMEDY CENTRAL's ongoing relationship with the South Beach Comedy Festival as its national media partner since 2005 and the channel's multi-year partnership with The New York Comedy Festival.
Fried joined COMEDY CENTRAL in 2001 as vice president, promotion marketing and was promoted to senior vice president, promotion marketing in 2003. In those roles, he was responsible for all integrated marketing and sponsorship opportunities that supported the network's advertising revenue, including movie studio relations, promotions and stunts and worked with the business development and consumer products groups to maximize ancillary revenue opportunities.
Before joining COMEDY CENTRAL, Fried was senior vice president, marketing for Golden Books Entertainment Group in New York and prior to that he was vice president, promotion marketing at Broadway Video Entertainment, "Saturday Night Live's" production company. He was the director of marketing at Viewers Choice and before that was with MTV Networks for Nickelodeon/Nick at Night and director of corporate merchandising MTV, VH-1, Nickelodeon/Nick at Night.
Fried holds a BBA in Marketing from Hofstra University's School of Business. He resides in Huntington New York with his wife and two children.