• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, June 28, 2007

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are headed north of the border.

Comedy Central and Canadian network CTV have signed a deal that allows the Canadian company to distribute Comedy Central shows across a number of platforms, including broadcast and digital broadband, VOD and mobile.

The deal gives CTV access to all Comedy Central programming, including "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," "South Park," "The Colbert Report" and "RENO 911," as well as full program archives. CTV is expected to air much of the new content on its specialty channel: The Comedy Network.

The online component of the arrangement calls for all Web traffic originating in Canada to be redirected to CTV's Web site for The Comedy Network, a proviso that affects not only ComedyCentral.com but also SouthParkStudios.com, Jokes.com and Colbertnation.com.

It's unclear, however, whether fans trying to find these sites will discover identical destinations on The Comedy Network site. It was recently re-launched for better broadband and mobile access. CTV is also getting access to all online content created by Comedy Central, including clips, shorts, wallpapers, and ring-tones.

According to Kris Faibish, CTV vice president of Digital Media, some of the content will debut as broadband, mobile or VOD exclusives. This may be a way to enable CTV to balance the Comedy Central programming with Canadian-produced content in TV broadcasts, thus fulfilling its regulatory commitment to 65% Canadian content in prime time.