Greg Endries
June 28, 2016
In The Mix

Man with a Brand

Mike Flaherty

If you're a fan of edgy, urban, distinctively voiced comedy, chances are you're also a fan of Tony Hernandez.

His production company Jax Media is behind shows like Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer and Broad City, TV Land's Younger and The Jim Gaffigan Show, Bravo's Odd Mom Out and Hulu's Difficult People. The New York-based firm, founded in 2011, has become the go-to house for what Hernandez calls "singular-vision comedies.

"Your lead actors are [also] the main writers and creative contributors," he says, citing Schumer's eponymous series as an example. "That creates an environment where the smartest idea rises to the top, and it makes them get scripts down to the right amount of pages, based on the flow of the show."

To put a finer point on it, Hernandez adds: "It's like, okay, we have S5 million to make a season of television; we have to get 10 episodes out of it. How are we going to figure this out?"

Hernandez learned the business from the ground up, beginning with a production assistant job on the 2000 feature Meet the Parents. He later served as an accounting clerk on a couple of major studio movies before becoming production manager on the acclaimed indie drama Precious in 2009.

The following year he signed on as line producer on FX's Louie, which pioneered the current comedic subgenre that is Jax's specialty.

This promises to be another growth year for Hernandez, with TBS's Full Frontal with Samantha Bee debuting to rave reviews.

He is also taking the business west, producing the pilot for the Los Angeles-based comedy Nobodies, executive-produced by Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone for TV Land. Search Party, a New York-based comedy about 20-somethings searching for a missing college pal — Jax's first self-financed pilot — has been picked up by TBS,

Aside from the occasional L.A. set visit, however, Hernandez insists that he'll be staying put in the city that made him and saturates his work. "I'm a New York guy."

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