(6 December 2008 6:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Viacom's Comedy Central has announced the expansion and relaunch of Jokes.com, an online destination and home for stand-up comedy.

The new site has over 5,000 video clips, including a full archive of Comedy Central's vault of original stand-up programming.

Jokes.com will also give users access to more than 12,000 text-based jokes and the ability to search its massive Comedians A-Z database of over a thousand comedians -- plus they can find out when their favourite stand-up is on TV, buy tickets for Comedy Central Live Stand-Up Tours and get up-to-the-minute comedy news from the Insider Blog.

MTV Entertainment Group executive VP, digital media Erik Flannigan says, "Stand-up comedy has always been the backbone of Comedy Central, be it on air, on tour, on record or on DVD.

"Jokes.com expands our commitment to stand up, providing a true digital hub for comedians and a deep video archive of their performance clips, plus thousands of text jokes -- all of it organized so you can't watch or read just one."

Jokes.com is designed to be the a robust site on the Web for stand-up comedy. With the site's full archive of clips from over 10 years of Comedy Central programming, it is being positioned as being a one-stop shop for users with thousands of stand-up videos from shows like Comedy Central Presents, Live At Gotham.