Did Hart ever think about throwing in the towel on LOL? “No, not at all,” he said. “It was about, for me, ‘How do I step up to the challenge?’ My challenge now is build this thing from ground zero to potentially a hero – one of the ones that made it. That’s my motivation, that was my reason to continue.”
To mark its third anniversary, LOL Network is launching a redesign of its website to better highlight the scope of its content across all platforms and formats, as well as comedy talent. “With the site redesign, we wanted to create a new destination that mirrored our evolution as a company and showcased the multiple divisions, distribution touchpoints, and top-tier talent partnerships we’ve developed,” Randolph said.
Randolph noted that LOL always had an ad-supported component to the business model, targeting a multicultural audience and doubling down on an African-American base of comedy fans. The industry’s increasing lean into AVOD, as demonstrated by Peacock, “validated our assumptions,” she said. At the same time, company execs wanted to diversify their portfolio to not be overly reliant on any single revenue stream because, as Randolph put it, “not all of these things are going to work.
The company is profitable, Randolph said, with headcount scaling up or down as needed for productions. “The core team is deliberately small and nimble,” she said. “We’ve kept this bottom-line focus and an eye toward profitability.”