A Taco Truck in the Office and a Dude in a Cage: Behind the Scenes at College Humor’s New MTV Show

What do you do after launching your own comedy Web site, selling it to Barry Diller–and then, just as impressively, managing to stay employed by Barry Diller? You get your own TV show, of course.

Also, did I mention that Ricky Van Veen and Josh Abramson are still in their 20s? They are. But the College Humor co-founders are remarkably level-headed given their well-chronicled success so far.

That’s likely how they’ve survived multiple management shake-ups at Diller’s IAC/Interactive Corp. (IACI). And it seems to be why they can handle their day jobs while simultaneously producing a new TV show–which is shooting in their office.

The show is scheduled to start airing on MTV in February; Viacom’s (VIA) cable network has bought six episodes, but the boys are hopeful this will turn into a longer engagement. They gave me a brief tour of the office/set and talked to me about the show and the business in general yesterday. The upshot: Making content is hard. Also, you need to dress up if you’re going to the IAC Christmas party.

Note to demanding video viewers: Per your request, I’m trying to shorten these things up, but this is still a whopping six minutes long. So if you want to jump around: The dude in the cage is around the 1:30 mark, and the taco truck appears about two minutes in. Ricky says something off-color around 2:50, and Josh appears shortly after that.

Here’s a College Humor best-of video announcing the MTV show:

But here’s a clip that’s much more representative of what the site’s up to:

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