NY Times – by Dave Itzkoff – In an epic, farewell-to-New York broadcast of “Conan” Thursday night that featured guest appearances by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert; a rare visit from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog; and the host, Conan O’Brien, officiating a same-sex marriage, the standup Louis C. K. made some news of his own. He announced on the show that he is taping a comedy special that will be broadcast only on the Internet.

Louis C. K., the star and creator of the FX series “Louie,” said in an interview with Mr. O’Brien that his upcoming concerts at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on Nov. 10 would be recorded and then posted in an edited version on his Web site, louisck.net, on Dec. 10 where it can be viewed for a cost of $5.

Asked in a phone interview on Friday morning why he was not bringing the special to a traditional cable television network, Louis C. K. said: “To me, I flip the question over: Why should I go through a cable network when I can just give it directly to the people who want to see it? It’s so much easier, and it’s an interesting experiment.”

Louis C. K. has been featured in the standup specials “Shameless,” which ran on HBO in 2007, and the Emmy Award-nominated “Chewed Up,” which appeared on Showtime in 2008. His most recent standup show, “Hilarious,” was presented at the Sundance Film Festival and picked up by the Epix cable channel, earning him two more Emmy nominations.

But in recent years, he said, the cable channels have become increasingly difficult and unnecessary platforms for him to present these kinds of shows.

“HBO used to be the thing,” Louis C. K. said. “It used to be called an HBO special, even if you had a special on Showtime – people would call it your HBO special. But HBO gave up that. They don’t do it anymore. I offered them ‘Hilarious,’ to broadcast, and they said, ‘Well, we don’t do any business with you. You don’t have a show on HBO, so we don’t have a reason to promote you that way.’”

Showtime, he said, “was really nice but they don’t really push stuff, they just kind of stick it on.” And Comedy Central is “a weird place – they show too many commercials and they cut all the cursing out.”

The joy of presenting a standup special that eliminates any traditional broadcast partner, Louis C. K. said, was that this new show “will be available immediately, and universally.” He added: “You don’t have to have an iTunes account in good standing. You don’t have to have your credit card at Netflix updated. You can be a loser and watch this thing. You can be in prison.”

Using this strategy, he said, monolithic and intrusive media corporations don’t have to be part of the equation, either.

“Everybody is outnumbered,” Louis C. K. said, “because everything in your wallet represents all these contentious relationships with these huge companies. If you want to watch one of my specials on Netflix, they start marketing to you, and you start getting Jeff Dunham ads. You try to read an article about Rwanda and a pop-up comes up for Larry the Cable Guy. ‘Hey, I heard you enjoyed Louie’s special – now we know who you are.’”

He continued: “You can’t put an old black-and-white TV set on your kitchen table and turn it on and watch something. You can’t throw on a record and listen to music. You have to belong to something. The idea was, let’s just make a thing where you stick your five dollars in a slot, and enjoy the show.”