🎙️ Listen to this episode:
Featured: Sebastian Maniscalco, Liz Mealy, Patton Oswalt, Mike Kaplan, Josh Johnson, Nick Swardson, Eugene Mirman, Todd Barry, Matt Ruby, Greg Stone
What’s in This Episode
- Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio rebrand of SiriusXM Raw Dog channel
- Working-class comedians losing airplay and royalties after channel rebrand
- Playlist reduction from 800 to 300 artists on rebranded channel
- Stand Up for Stand Up non-profit advocacy for affected comedians
- SiriusXM’s shift toward celebrity and legacy comedians on new channel
Questions Answered in This Episode
What happened to the Raw Dog comedy channel on SiriusXM?
SiriusXM rebranded the Raw Comedy channel into Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, a 24-7 branded channel that reduced the artist playlist from approximately 800 comedians to 300, heavily favoring celebrity and dead comedians over working-class performers.
How are working comedians being affected by the SiriusXM rebrand?
Working-class comedians have been removed from airplay and are losing the residual royalty income they previously depended on, with many relying on these checks as a crucial part of their income while building their careers.
Why are comedians calling out Sebastian Maniscalco specifically?
Comedians are appealing to Maniscalco to reverse the rebrand since he’s the public face of the new channel, emphasizing that he likely didn’t understand the impact and asking him to restore working comedians to the playlist.
What did SiriusXM say about why they made this change?
SiriusXM sources said the rebrand was a necessary move to address underperformance on a channel that wasn’t meeting listener expectations, though this contradicts previous reports of the channel’s popularity.
What organization is advocating for the affected comedians?
Stand Up for Stand Up, a non-profit organization, published a piece documenting how the rebrand has concentrated airplay among upper-echelon comics and harmed working-class comedians’ passive residual income.
Did Johnny Mac have a previous connection to the Raw Dog channel?
Yes, Johnny Mac was vice president of comedy and entertainment for SiriusXM and programmed the Raw Dog channel from 2004 to 2014, disclosing this conflict of interest at the start of the episode.
Full Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.
Caloroga Shark Media. Bonus episode. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. I’m recording this at 9.48 on Tuesday. I expect this story is going to move quickly as Sebastian Maniscalco probably, in my opinion, finds himself with a headache he doesn’t want to deal with.
The headline from Deadline is.. Comedians call on Sebastian Maniscalco, SiriusXM, to restore working-class comic airplay following Raw Dog rebrand. If you’re finding me for the first time in this video, I do want to disclose I was vice president of comedy and entertainment for SiriusXM. I programmed the Raw Dog channel from 2004 to 2014. I’m going to let the comedians tell this story and the Deadline article tell this story.
Let’s start with the Deadline article. They wrote, Sebastian Maniscalco isn’t widely viewed as a controversial comic, but he’s found himself in the hot seat this week, scrutinized over a recent SiriusXM changeover in which he’s prominently involved. Earlier this year, as we first reported we being a deadline, the satellite radio provider replaced Raw Comedy, a long-running channel on its subscription service, with the 24-7 branded channel Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio. As argued in a new piece by non-profit Stand Up for Stand Up, this evolution of SiriusXM’s comedy programming has been harmful to working class comics who depended on raw dog airplay and the royalties that came with it. What’s happened, they’ve shown, is that airplay has become significantly concentrated among the industry’s upper echelon of comics, living and dead, impacting passive residual income going to comics at lower levels.
As I’ve dove in on this, people are saying that the playlist has been trimmed from about 800 artists to about 300 artists. Some of the criticism seems to be that the channel is now playing a lot of dead comedians. Bob Hope is being signaled out. I’ll talk about my opinions on programming in the second half of this podcast. What is really interesting, I’m going to play a lot of clips from comedians you’ve heard of that the industry has really, really rallied about this.
I’ll play clips in about a minute, but continue with the deadline story. In his own Instagram video post titled, Sebastian Maniscalco is Destroying Comedy. Comedian Greg Stone appealed to Sebastian as, quote, one Italian coming to another Italian, writes Deadline. Quoting Greg Stone, I’m going to assume you didn’t notice the effects of the rebrand because no Italian is going to take money out of the hardworking man’s pocket. Stone said comedy fans may not notice the change, but they may see more of their favorite comics pumping gas and waiting tables.
Deadline writes, sources close to SiriusXM acknowledge the legitimacy of comics concerns. That’s a quote from Deadline there, given the service’s long history of investing in comedians at all career stages. And providing substantial royalties as one of the big homes to Comedy Audio. However, Sirius, which operates fewer than 10 comedy channels out of a couple hundred spanning news, music, and more.. I’ll push back on the fewer than 10 makes it sound like they’re not trying.
That’s a lot of comedy channels. So let’s be fair there. We’re said to view the rebrand as a necessary move to address underperformance on a channel that wasn’t meeting listener expectations. Now, that last part surprises me. My information is 12 years old.
I have no data whatsoever. But when I was there and the last time I was there was in February of 2014, if my memory serves, the channel was very popular. I’ll put it that way. A SiriusXM spokesperson told Deadline, quote, to deliver a wide range of comedy offerings across our channels. Now, before I play the clips, to me, some talking points have gone out.
In these clips, you’ll notice everyone is going out of their way to not only not bash Sebastian, they’re going out of their way to say what an awesome guy Sebastian is. I’ve never met Sebastian Maniscalco, so I don’t know how he is in real life. I’ll assume he’s awesome because that’s what everyone is saying, but I am picking up that everyone is going out of their way to say that. I also noticed that both Deadline and And the comedians are calling the channel Raw Dog. I believe it was rebranded as Raw Comedy maybe a few years back.
Again, this is like, in effect, my ex-girlfriend or my ex-wife. I don’t really pay attention to what they do since we broke up. But I believe it was called Raw Comedy and not Raw Dog. So it’s interesting to me that they’re using the vintage Raw Dog name. Anyway, I have a bunch of comedians for you.
We’ll start with Liz Mealy, who seems to be at the center point of the discussion. So here’s Liz. Hi, my name is Liz Mealy. I’m a stand-up comedian, and this video is for Sebastian Maniscalco. Oh, my God!
This year, the Raw channel on SiriusXM became Sebastian Maniscalco’s channel. Great. Fine. Celebrities have taken over channels before. Never been an issue.
The problem with this is. The problem is, Raw went from playing 800 working-class comedians to now playing less than 300 celebrity comedians, like Joan Rivers, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Norm Macdonald, just. Dead comic, dead comic, dead comic.
And then a plethora of very famous, alive comedians that might not even know …
A look of confusion and concern comes over their face. But every working class comedian that has been kicked off the channel is quite aware. And it is devastating. Because of this action. Hundreds of comedians will no longer be able to have these royalties.
Working class comedians, people that only make money on the road, that have no safety net, that depend on this money to just survive, are going from having that money to nothing. I’m making a lot of money, you know that. If you’re Sebastian, hi. Maybe you didn’t know. Maybe you didn’t understand.
What the hell are you doing? But now you know. And you can help us. You can fix this. We would love to be reincorporated into the channel and start getting the streams and plays that we were getting before you took it over.
If that person has any class, please, come on now. What was beautiful about Raw. Was that it was an uncensored channel of working, hilarious comedians of every variety. And we would love for you to bring us back. Thank you for listening.
And now I’m going to play six clips in a row. I’m just going to put them back to back to back to back so that I don’t have to just jump in and introduce them. They are in order. Star Trek Ruiner Patton Oswalt, best known as Doug the Vulcan. Don’t start me.
That’s a topic for another day. Mike Kaplan, Josh Johnson, Nick Swartzen, Eugene Merman. In Eugene Merman’s video, he mentions a Todd Barry video. I looked for the Todd Barry video. I didn’t see it.
The last thing I’m seeing on Todd Barry threads is from September 26th.
And then the final one is from Matt Ruby.
So here’s six clips in a row. Hey, quick message for Sebastian Maniscalco. I’m in the airport. I know you and I are used to being in the airport. We’re working comedians.
Hi! But listen, there’s a lot of up-and-coming comedians who are depending on the money and the checks that they get from Sirius. And the fact that you and I still get to tour and still get to work and still get to be as funny as we are is because comedy.. Right now is so dynamic and has so many new young voices that are coming up. But 500 of them have been.
Booted off of Sirius. You bought that channel. I know you didn’t mean to do anything bad by doing it. You can easily reverse this decision. Get those young comedians back on the Sirius channel.
Let them get those checks. Let them keep working. Let them keep coming up. It keeps us working. It keeps the profession that we’re in dynamic and fun.
This is going on. Way too long. I have had way too much coffee. But anyway, Sebastian, come on, man. From one touring comedian to the other, do.
The right thing. Hey, comedy fans. Comedian Mike Kaplan here with a quick, weird, serious comedy matter to discuss. One of the most substantial ways that a lot of working comics make our living is by getting our tracks streamed on comedy channels on Sirius Radio. Historically, there’s been a SiriusXM channel called Raw, which has played lots of tracks from lots of working stand-up comedians, and it’s given us a lot in royalties.
You may not know that in June of 2026, that channel became Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, and the content has changed dramatically. And as Sebastian himself might say, it ain’t right. The channel used to feature regularly more than 800 comedians, but since June, that number has dropped by more than 500, and that’s sad. Now the channel is only playing about 300 comedians, and they’re mostly super famous, which means that the working comedians aren’t getting played and aren’t getting paid, and this move only enriches the already super well-off financially and most successful highest echelon of comics. Is it me?
I wish. The comics appearing on the channel now include dead ones, like Joan Rivers and Bob Hope, and they’re great, and that’s great, but living comedians need money to live, and those dead comedians don’t need money to be dead. Those royalties have been a good chunk of how a lot of comedians have been paying our bills, and at a time when gas prices and flights are more expensive and life is lifing the way that it is, it’s just extra challenging. We’d love for Sebastian and the folks over at Sirius to reconsider how this move has impacted hundreds of comedians, and we just want working comedians to be able to work and live. So Sebastian, if you’re watching this, thank you first, and thanks for considering helping to reverse this trend that will really help the comedy community thrive and make it so that most of us comedians don’t have to stay hungry.
And if you’re not Sebastian and you’re watching this, thank you for watching and consider sharing it so we can help the word get to the people that it needs to. If you are a comedy fan, you have probably been watching all day as comedians have been posting about what’s going on with Sirius. And I want to use a little bit of time to explain why this is so important to so many comics. There’s lots of ways comics can be discovered. And there’s more now than there have ever been.
But some of them are on social like YouTube and Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, stuff like that.
And then there are other ways.
They’re more traditional. And these ways got comics paid pretty immediately with royalties. And these royalties were no joke. If you were making ends meet, this could be your rent money. This could be A lot to you, you know, even if it didn’t seem like a lot at the time.
And this channel, Raw, going from what it was to Sebastian’s channel and dropping all these comics is a huge deal because a lot of these people really depended on that money. And, you know, I’ve been really fortunate. And the more fortunate I’ve been, the more important it’s been for me to recognize that, like, everyone deserves as many chances as possible. Your joke being played on Sirius could mean that someone buys a ticket that was on the fence or someone discovers you that didn’t know who you were. And I think it’s as important as possible right now to recognize Give people that are really trying to make a way for everyone to be happy and have a good time a way to make a living.
And so I. Know that this is a thing that maybe Sebastian didn’t even know about, but also I think it’s really important for all of us, for you. If you’ve seen some of your favorite comics or some people that you haven’t seen before, but I guarantee you are probably very, very funny, talk about this thing. One of the main things that you can do is put in the work to discover them, put in, put in the work to based off of a comics recommendation, check out another comic based off of, uh, your interest in someone’s clip, maybe see if they’re on the road and see if they’re in your city, you know, those types of things help too, because at the end of the day, there’s only so much everyone can do, but this is something that anybody can do. Um, yeah, I mean, I’m, I hope this gets resolved soon.
And yeah, I hope that everybody’s taking care. Look, I love my friend Sebastian. He’s a great comic, great guy. I love SiriusXM. They’ve helped me throughout the years.
And they need to continue to help other comics. It’s very important, man. They got to get them back on the rotation. They depend on it. I love Joan Rivers.
I love Norm Macdonald. But they.. They don’t need rent money. At least I hope they don’t. They have passed on, and I hope they don’t need rent money.
But they don’t. So figure it out, you guys. You’re awesome. You can do it. Seinfeld doesn’t need residual checks.
He just doesn’t. I don’t care about my plays. You don’t have to play me at all. I care about the working comedians, the hustlers, the people that need this to live. That’s very, very important.
Do your best, you guys. Figure it out. All right. Cheers. And go support your local comedy clubs.
Very important too all right. Cheers hey sebastian this is my 70th attempt at a video to camera where i’m talking about the serious xm thing anyway i guess i just wanted to add my voice to the chorus of the comedians saying thank god bob hope is dead um so that’s a lot of it and also thank you for getting you know changing the name from raw dog raw dog was not it was always weird it was always weird i mean it’s how a lot of people made their money And they couldn’t say it because you can’t be at Thanksgiving and be like, most of my money comes from raw dog. You know but anyway a lot of people’s money did come from there and so if you could just play those comics it’s also fun to discover comics there you know i have a small record label with some friends and you know when we sign comics like a lot of our hope is really that the tracks get ingested by serious xm and that’s how we can kind of afford to do it anyway you get the whole thing uh i heard you’re a good guy from todd barry’s video and i’m assuming it’s true he wouldn’t he wouldn’t say that uh in his video if he didn’t think it. I don’t want to have to rethink the business model of a record label where it’s like, oh, now it’s like a free download code with every Honda Civic I sell, because that’s like a car dealership. Okay, anyway, good luck.
I stand in opposition to my fellow comedians and on the side of SiriusXM, and I’m. Going to tell you why. If you don’t know, Sebastian Maniscalco took over raw dog and now they’re not playing, you know, my tracks anymore, which, you know, used to be some nice income that I would get. Uh, but you know, I think this is better because now they’re playing tracks by like Joan Rivers and Bob Hope and Johnny Carson. And, you know, let’s think about the estates of those deceased performers and, uh, Think about the groundskeepers who need to mow those lawns and the people who need to clean those swimming pools and the maids and the butlers.
And, you know, someone needs to be thinking about the estates. And it’s hard to run an estate, especially when the person who left you all those hundreds of millions of dollars isn’t there anymore.
Also, I’m kind of like a comedy conservative, so I believe in trickle-down la…
So, you know, now we’ve got, you know, Sebastian or Eddie Murphy jokes playing instead of mine on Sirius. But I think all those laughs are going to trickle down to the audiences that are going to see me perform tonight, you know, in front of probably like a couple dozen people. And like there’s just going to be more laughter for all of us because the pie is going to increase.
And lastly, I’m opposed to collective action.
I see all these comedians posting together at the same time. It’s like, oh, so you conspired? To come up with some secret plan. We have proper channels for this sort of thing. You know, there’s a pipeline.
Why don’t you go to Congress? Congress is great at moving on things like this. Or let’s take it to the FCC. I haven’t been paying a lot of attention to them lately, but I’m pretty sure the FCC loves comedy. And so that’s the more proper outlet, because this right now, it feels a little bit like we’re a bunch of French farmers or something.
Like, what are we going to do, like dump a pile of manure outside Sirius XM? So, yeah, I guess I’m opposed to the comedian community and on the side of Sirius XM, because I think this not having my tracks played there anymore and not having that income is just going to make me even hungrier. It’s really going to make things easier for me. Jeff Gorlin seems quite passionate about it, even though he’s not really familiar with how Sebastian pronounces his name. Gorlin is also calling it Raw Dog in this clip.
Gorlin says that he doesn’t believe Raw Dog played any of his stuff. I believe we did back in the day, but my memory may be faulty and Jeff would know if he got royalties or not. But I think we did neither here nor there. But here’s Jeff Gorlin. This is a message that I’m putting out.
For Sebastian Manicolco. Not Manicolco. I think it’s Manicolco. By the way, think about this. Know the man.
It’s not important that I can’t pronounce his name, or maybe I did correctly. The point being is Raw Dog Radio has turned into Sebastian Manicolco Radio. And what happened is a bunch of comedians who are relying on some extra cash which is necessary for so many middle-of-the-road comedians. I’m not saying middle-of-the-road talent. I’m talking about where they’re at as they’re developing.
The cash comes in handy. So they have been eliminated from Raw Dog Radio, and now Sebastian’s channel is all older, successful comedians. Me, I don’t think SiriusXM has ever even played a minute of my comedy. Certainly Raw Dog. So this is nothing about me.
This is about these comics being able to pay their bills and also get exposure. And, um, by paying the bills, they can continue and they can develop. And it brings us new great comedians because they’re out there. They’re out there. People, you have no idea who they are or they’re getting some money from raw dog.
You may have heard them and go, I dig that point being is I hope Sebastian either sees this, hears about this, or I, um, I, uh, um, Maybe you can write to SiriusXM. You text them or you send an email. You’re not going to write. Although a longhand letter would probably be very impressive. But help out these comics.
Really. All right. We’ll take the break there. I’ll come back with some thoughts. I’m making this post because Sebastian Maniscalco has decided to genocide a lot of comedians that used to make a living on SiriusXM Raw Dog.
A lot of younger or maybe lesser known comedians who had had their content played on Sirius and were compensated for it are no longer being played on Raw Dog. So Sebastian’s an awesome, amazing guy, and I’m sure that he will fix that. The Italians did side with Hitler in World War II, which I don’t love. But World War II is also interesting. A lot of people.
Are now kind of reexamining that, which I don’t know that that’s the greatest way to go, but that is happening. And yeah, so I just wanted to make this post to tell him that he’s my daddy and I know that daddy’s going to do the right thing. As the former programmer of the Raw Dog channel, in terms of what’s played, my body of work is there. I guess somewhere you could go and see what we played back in the day, so I’ll let my work stand for itself. My programming philosophy was a mix of hit comedians in all formats play the hits, including talk radio, news radio, music radio, comedy radio, play the hits.
Back in my time there, the hits were people like Jeff Dunham and Dane Cook. Mitch Fatel was very popular. Mitch Hedberg was very popular back in those days. We would go to festivals and learn about, quote unquote, new comedians or up and comers. And we would play a lot of those folks.
We would spotlight people. I remember we did Hannibal Buress week. I remember we did Tim Minchin week. And we would try and spotlight newer voices that we got turned on to by going to the festivals. In terms of what they’re playing today, I don’t have access to their research.
I don’t have access into their insight. I would ask you just talk to the current programmers. I don’t know. I’ve never met Sebastian Maniscalco. Based upon the type of meeting that probably took place, I would guess, total speculation, that there was a five-minute discussion with Sebastian who probably riffed off a bunch of comedians he likes and people wrote them down and that’s what’s being played.
As for why they would trim the playlist, I don’t know. I can tell you Towards the end of my run there, I was asked to convert Raw Dog’s traditional format, which ran for most of my 10 years there, into a modified program called Raw Dog Comedy Hits was the branding during my last month there. And we stripped out a lot of the new comedians. You can ask the bosses there why that decision was made. I suspect this story will move very fast.
I will update it when I can. I just want to be transparent. I have a very busy week. I had actually pre-taped a few episodes of Daily Comedy News to cover specifically on wednesday morning i can’t be behind the microphone so if i go dark that’s why i’m just a little busy here a spokesperson has told tmz quote sirius xm works together with our creative partners to program the best possible experience for our listeners the launch of sebastian menescalco’s comedy radio introduced a new creative direction and a regularly evolving programming mix for the channel Sirius XM continues to invest in comedians more than any other audio platform to deliver a wide range of comedy offerings across our channels. That seems very similar, if not verbatim, to the statement that I read from Deadline.
Anyway, I suspect this will move quickly. I suspect we will hear from Sebastian Maniscalco, and I’ll jump back in with updates as that happens. There was a normal episode in the feed earlier this morning, and on Wednesday morning, you won’t hear me talk about this topic at all because I do have a busy schedule. But this is a bonus episode of Daily Comedy News. See you soon.