Are the lunatics running the asylum? “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker landed a three-year renewal with Viacom’s Comedy Central for the show that involves $75 million in upfront cash and will see the creation of a joint venture SouthParkStudios.com.

In an unusual move in the media industry, the two will also receive a 50-50 split of advertising revenue, according to the New York Times. (Actually a Viacom spokeswoman told us after we first published this that the split is just for digital ad revenue.)

SouthParkStudios “is intended to be an incubator not only for new applications for characters the likes of Cartman, Kyle, Stan and Kenny, but also for new comedy concepts that could one day mature into TV series of their own.”

The new site is designed to spread the show’s related material across the Internet, cell phones and video games.“If I’m overseas and have to get an episode right away,” Stone lamented, “you literally have to go to an illegal download site.”

Stone might have to keep on lamenting. We couldn’t find any full-length episodes on the new site.
(New York Times)

Keep an eye on:

• Buried at the bottom of Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz’s column on Money Honey 2.0 (Erin Burnett) is an item on CNBC “Fast Money” regular Eric Bolling. Bolling, who quit last week, popped up on Neil Cavuto’s Fox News show. With Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Business Channel launching less than two months away, let the poaching begin! (Washington Post)
• NBC Universal preparing to buy Hallmark channel owner Sparrowhawk Media for $351 million? (Sunday Telegraph)
• As if the music industry didn’t have enough bad news, Russian music retail site AllofMP3.com is BACK. (TechCrunch)
• Yahoo revamps e-mail, enables texting to cell phones. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters / Matt Stone, Trey Parker)