Yahoo's Latest, 'What's So Funny' Snags Shira Lazar, ConAgra Foods

Yahoo took a sheet from its own playbook in launching its newest original series today, What’s So Funny? Having already found success with its crop of short TV recap series like its incredibly popular tentpole Primetime in No Time and its sister version Daytime in No Time, it seems only natural that there was more juice to be squeezed from this fruit.

Where the others breezed through the hot reality shows and soaps, What’s So Funny recaps selected comedy clips from the night before. Tapped for the hosting spots are comedian Mike Bachman, a former writer on Primetime in No Time, and Shira Lazar.

Sponsoring the series for Yahoo is ConAgra Foods, with episodes featuring post-roll video and display ads and for a rotation of its brands like Marie Callendar’s and Healthy Choice. Even within each 4-minute episode is a slightly forced, but bearable, “ingredients for good comedy” segment which breezes through some of the pair’s favorite comedy clips. There’s also the He Said-She Said face off to each episode, where each host picks their favorite comedy clip from the night before and makes the case for which is funnier. In the debut episode (above), Lazar backed an ‘underrated’ Taylor Swift clip from her SNL appearance which Bachman went with Larry David’s lemonade stand melee from the latest Curb Your Enthusiasm

Online personality Shira Lazar is no stranger to hosted web series. For years now she’s been a venerable journeywoman of the internet, with a slew of semi-regular hosting gigs on shows like This Week in YouTube, TechStyle, LX.TV, and Reelz Channel’s What it Takes. But lately Lazar has signed on with two major media brands—CBS News and Yahoo!—giving her a much needed home for the budding media empress.

Catching up with Lazar, it’s almost exhausting trying to piece together the myriad of projects she has brewing.  She is now perhaps the Ryan Seacrest of web TV. The new position has her shooting six days a week, typically from around 6 to 9 PM in the studio, not counting TV watching time from the night before. This is all of course after she spends much of her days creating content for her CBSNews.com blog, On The Scene with Shira, shooting video segments for Mo Rocca’s The Tomorrow Show, working as an ambassador for GeekChicDaily or even contributing to the Huffington Post.

Lazar said she is happy with the long (by web TV standards) commitment, signing a 50-week contract with Yahoo, in a deal that she says pays her more than her previous on-air TV gig with NBC Los Angeles. “You can have a legitimate career online,” said Lazar explaining her drive to constantly be clocking 16-hour workdays. For now, it’s clear that she’s happy to balance her more serious CBSNews work—’experiential journalism’ as she calls it—with her lighter side that just loves a good laugh. And for us internet junkies, who better than one of our own to help fill us in on what we missed on TV last night?