Comedy Central has had much better luck with the genre than its younger rival, thanks in particular to a bunch of cut-out construction paper characters (even if they are animated on high-powered computers these days); South Park wraps up its eighth season in late October with seven new episodes. Last year’s in-development project House Arrest evolved into and premiered earlier this year as Shorties Watching Shorties. The first shorties in the titles are two wise-cracking animated babies watching the other shorties: excerpts from the channel’s library of stand-up performances turned into Flash-animated cartoon segments that illustrate the comic’s exaggerations as if they were the literal truth.

“It’s a fun way to explore stand-up for us. Our Friday night stand-up block does really well for us,” says Zoe Friedman, Comedy Central’s vp of current programming. “It’s always a challenge for us to find a different way to do stand-up.” The freshman series, animated by Eric Brown at New York’s World Famous Pictures (with additional animation handled by Augenblick Studios), returns on October 27.

In-house development project House Arrest became Shorties Watchin’ Shorties. Photo by: Comedy Central.

While Kid Notorious, last year’s high-profile cartoon debut has dropped out of sight, the channel is premiering one fully — and one mostly-animated series this fall, the first of which is sure to garner South Park-levels of notoriety.

Drawn Together bills itself as TV’s first “animated reality series,” with weirded-out versions of characters from just about every cartoon genre (Disney-esque princess, muscle-bound superhero, Saturday morning rock & roll crime-solver, etc.) living together The Real World-style. For Friedman, Drawn Together is more than another animated taboo-buster; it’s the solution to the channel’s quest for a reality show spoof. “We got a lot of reality pitches. Most were from people who think for a reality show to work for us, let’s see how far we can push the envelope. That doesn’t make it funnier, it just makes it more shocking, and our job is to provide the laughs. When they came up with this idea it really clicked — this would be a fun way to do a reality show and deliver on the comedy first and foremost.”

“They” are Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser, the show’s producers and Crank Yanker‘s season two showrunners. “We love reality TV, we love cartoons. It was like, “let’s take the two things we love and let’s put them together,” says either Matt or Dave, their voices and attitudes blending together during a recent conference call. “We immediately called our agent and he told us it was a terrible idea. He said `The networks love reality TV because it’s cheap.’ Then we told him we don’t have to give anyone on our show a prize.”

Silverstein and Jeser enlisted the aid of The Simpsons animator Jordan Young, who designed Drawn Together’s literal cast of characters in exchange for an opportunity to write for the show. Comedy Central was always the pair’s first choice to air the series, even though they knocked on a few other doors as well. “We also went to Cartoon Network, but I honestly believe that we pitched it to the receptionist; this person was like answering phones while we were pitching them.

Matt Silverstein and Dave Jeser (right) created TV’s first animated reality series with Drawn Together. Photo by: Comedy Central.

“We were talking to one of the other networks which I won’t name, but it rhymes with `box.’ They wanted to make some small changes to it, like maybe it shouldn’t be a reality TV show. We realized they weren’t really the network for us. For the kind of jokes we want to do, the kind of stories we want to tell, we’re going to be able to do it at Comedy Central. That’s our audience: stoned, drunk college kids.”

Silverstein and Jeser compare the creative atmosphere at Comedy Central with the broadcast networks, where shows like Father of the Pride or UPN’s briefly-aired Game Over seem inhibited by their need to appeal to more mainstream audiences. “I think Pride looks great, but they just don’t seem to have a lot of fun with the fact that it’s animated. They have an opportunity to create this fantastical world, and they go pretty primetime with their stories. On Comedy Central we can do an original show with an original voice and not have to worry about making it too traditional.”

While Drawn Together is the channel’s answer to the reality craze, the pair seem more excited by its cartoon parody aspect. “The reality TV conventions — the confessionals, the challenges — are a way to tell stories, but ultimately the fun is eight colliding animated universes in one house. Even the genres we don’t touch on for the main characters, we’ll have fun with throughout the series. They come in as friends or ex-girlfriends. At one point a Transformer comes and attacks the house.”