A favorite short film host, Atom Films, has decided to narrow its once broad library of films to focus purely on comedy. It joins the likes of SuperDeluxe, Jib Jab, and FunnyOrDie—publishing original comedic web series and user-produced comedy films.

Owned by MTV since 2006, Atom has been adopted into the Comedy Central family who describes its new member as “our punk-rock label… where you’re purposely encouraging development that’s supposed to f*** with the system and break down boundaries.”

So, what’s happened to all the thousands of un-funny, dramatic shorts that once called AtomFilms.com home?

Poof. All have been permanently removed from the site (including one of my own).

Why choose comedy?

“In the online viewing experience, you’ve got to grab the viewer immediately,” says Atom, and “there’s not a lot of viral tearjerkers.” Atom is simply reiterating what many have known for years—that the nature of short films (particularly online shorts) is one well-suited to comedy.

That got me thinking about Short of the Week. A quick look at our comedy category shows that only 10 of the 60 or so best online films are comedies. It’s clear that our film selections have been chosen based on their depth, innovation, provocation, and memorability more so than their “viral appeal”.

The truth of the matter is, when you run an advertisement-based revenue model as Atom does, you need to generate as many views as possible (Atom receives nearly 2 million visitors every month). This model tends to promote films with strong attraction and initial appeal—take a look at YouTube’s Most Popular videos—over the audience favorites.

If this model tends to favor comedy as a genre, other models, such as direct sale of digital copies, would no doubt produce a uniquely different genre distribution. A quick look at the list of short films on the iTunes Store shows that only about half are comedic. A large slice of the pie, certainly, but one that leaves another big slice largely ignored by Atom and the online film community.