Daily Comedy News Podcast Transcripts

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Featured: Norm MacDonald, David Letterman, Colin Quinn, O.J. Simpson, Donald Trump, Marla Maples, Nicole Brown Simpson, Ron Goldman, Conan O’Brien, Dave Chappelle, Adam Sandler, David Spade

What’s in This Episode

• Norm MacDonald’s 9-year cancer battle kept secret from public
• Norm MacDonald’s anti-comedy style on SNL Weekend Update
• Norm MacDonald’s controversial O.J. Simpson jokes at SNL
• Why Norm MacDonald was fired from SNL mid-season
• Norm MacDonald’s final Late Show appearance with David Letterman
• Norm MacDonald’s comedy philosophy on surprise and authenticity
• Norm MacDonald’s relationship with Letterman and emotional final interview

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hi there, I’m Johnny Mac, and on Saturdays, we’ve been doing deep dives into one particular comedian. Today, let’s take a look at Norm MacDonald, and we’ve got that documentary coming out soon. Norm once wrote that a joke should catch someone by surprise and should never pander. That sentence appeared in a statement released the day that he died. It was written by his longtime friend and producing partner, Laurie, who was describing what Norm MacDonald believed about comedy.

It’s a good sentence, a true sentence, and it applies to the death itself, which caught everybody by surprise because Norm Macdonald had been sick for nine years and nobody knew. He was diagnosed in 2013, multiple myeloma, a cancer affecting white blood cells. That developed into acute leukemia. He told his family, he told Lori, and basically no one else. Not his comedy friends, not Conan, not Letterman, not Chappelle, not Sandler, not Spade.

He did his podcast from 2013 to 2018. He did the Netflix series in 2018. He did press tours and talk show appearances and stand-up dates right to the end. He was scheduled to perform at the New York Comedy Festival in November of 2021. He passed away September 14th, 2021, at 61 years old.

His brother Neil told the CBC that he had kept it quiet because he didn’t want it to affect his comedy and he didn’t want it to affect the way he was perceived. The man who spent his career making jokes about death, darkness, about the fundamental absurdity of being alive, had spent the last nine years of his life quietly making sure that the cancer didn’t become the bit. He protected the comedy from the cancer the same way he protected everything he cared about, which is by keeping it separate from anything that could soften it or make the audience feel like they needed to be gentle. Norman Gene MacDonald, born October 17th, 1959 in Quebec City. He moved to Ottawa as a child and started doing stand-up in Canada as a teenager and got good at it fast enough that by the late 80s he was moving to New York, working in the same clubs everybody worked, getting noticed in a way that people got noticed, slowly, by the right people.

Before Saturday Night Live, he worked as a writer on Roseanne in 1992. That gave him a TV credit and discipline and not much of the way of a public profile. He joined the SNL cast in 1993. The Weekend Update role is where most people found him and most people know him from, and the specific way that he did Weekend Update was unlike anything the segment had produced before or has produced since. Norm had a way at looking at the camera that suggested mild confusion about why any of this was funny, combined with absolute confidence that it was, delivered in a voice that seemed to be reading the jokes for the first time, even though they were tightly rehearsed material.

Real estate mogul Donald Trump announced this week that after three and a half years of marriage, he is seeking a divorce from wife Marla Maples. According to Trump, Maples violated part of their marriage agreement when she decided to turn 30. The deadpan was not a choice that he made for each joke. It was a foundational operating condition that everything ran through. He could say something completely absurd and something completely true in the same sentence and in the same tone of voice.

And the audience had to do the work of figuring out which was which. The O.J. Material is the chapter of his SNL career that gets told the most often because it got him in a little bit of trouble. Norm made O.J. Jokes.

NBC executive Don Ulmeier was friends with O.J. Simpson, so Norm got fired. That’s the simple version. Norm wasn’t making O.J. Jokes because they were edgy, because they generated attention.

He was making them because he generally believed O.J. Killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman because he thought it was wrong that the entertainment world was moving on and because.. He was incapable of pretending otherwise, even when the institution wanted him to pretend otherwise. According to retailers, the most popular Halloween mask this year is O.J. Simpson.

And the most popular Halloween greeting is, I’ll kill you and that guy who’s bringing over your glasses. Or a trait. And the Pope came out with a book this week, which contains a series of essays examining faith and morality in today’s secular world and the changing role of the Catholic Church as it approaches the 21st century. The book is entitled, God Himself Told Me That O.J. Is Guilty.

Thank you. In other book news, Prince Charles released an autobiography in which he states that he never loved Princess Di and that his father pressured him to marry her. The book is entitled, Of Course O.J. Did It. I mean, come on.

In his book, O.J. Simpson says that he would have taken a bullet or stood in front. Of a train for Nicole. Man, I’m going to tell you, that is some bad luck when the one guy who would have. Died for you kills you.

That’s it. You don’t get worse luck than that. And O.J. Announced this week that he’s coming out with a new book called I Want to Tell You. And if it’s successful, O.J.

Will work on yet another book entitled From Football to Prison, My 25 Years of Showering with Other Men.

And finally, in honor of the 50th anniversary of their first publication, Ran…

Seuss classics. The first to hit the bookshelves will be Green Eggs and Ham and O.J. Is Guilty. After the not guilty verdict in 1995, he opened Weekend Update with, well, it’s official, murder is now legal in the state of California. When grisly crime scene photos were shown in court and O.J.

Turned away and wept, Norm MacDonald said, O.J. Realized he’d never be able to kill her again. At the ESPYs in 1998, he was presenting the Heisman Trophy Award to Charles Woodson. He congratulated Woodson and said no one could take it away from him. He became the first defensive player to win the Heisman Trophy.

Congratulations, Charles. That is something that no one can ever take away from you. Unless you kill your wife in a waiter, in which case. When OJ died in April 2024, Norm had been dead for three years already. Norm’s name immediately trended alongside OJ’s because the internet understood the correct response to the news was a Norm MacDonald joke.

Norm was fired mid-season, so this isn’t like one of those quiet walkaway at the end. It was mid-season and replaced on Weekend Update by Colin Quinn. What Norm was doing on Weekend Update was anti-comedy, really before that was a term. It’s a joke that’s not quite a joke that builds towards a punchline and then holds the punchline back or comes in so aggressive. That the simplicity is funnier than any twist would have been.

Anti-comedy takes a standard joke structure and runs it so past its expected ending that the audience’s discomfort becomes the material. Norm Macdonald was working in that space before most people identified it as a space, and he did it better than just about anyone. Norm Macdonald’s relationship with David Letterman will tell you the most about who Norm was outside of his comedy persona because it was genuine in a way that wasn’t performed for the audience. Letterman had been an idol to him. He said so directly multiple times.

When Letterman chose who would do the final stand-up set of the entire run of Late Show in 2015, he picked Norm MacDonald. Thanks, guys. Listen, I don’t want to brag or anything, but me and Oprah are making the same money tonight. Yeah, Letterman picked Norm MacDonald, not Jerry Seinfeld, who was also on that week. Not any of the big talent that had passed through the show across 33 years.

Letterman picked Norm MacDonald. Dave said, if we could have, we would have had Norm on every week. He’s funny in a way that some people inhale and exhale. After Norm did his set, he told Letterman on camera that Dave was the greatest talk show host who ever lived and started to cry, said, I love you, and Letterman, who spent his career being distant, didn’t deflect it. All right, welcome back to the big show.

Let me just get rid of this doll of steak. So, Paul is. Working out today. You know what health club I work out there. Don’t you, Paul?

No, which one? Work out at Crunch. So his waiter comes to our table, Paul. He’s one of the real oily guy. You know, those kind of guys, real oily.

He looks right at me, gives me one of these like, hey, enjoying your shrimp? Norm Macdonald’s relationship with Conan is a little different because Conan was his sparring partner and co-conspirator across two decades of TV appearances. The dynamic they developed is hard to recreate. Norm appeared on Conan’s various shows from the 1230 show through the TBS version. Each appearance had the same basic structure.

Norm would start a story. The story would go somewhere a little crazy. Conan would react. Norm would use Conan’s reaction as material and build jokes out of Conan’s reaction rather than do his own prepared stuff. I like that Madonna’s baby thing.

Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, I really have to give it to that guy that’s the father, you know? Carlos. Leon. Carlos Leon.

Or Carlos Leon. I forget which one. Because you’ve got to have a lot of guts. That means he had sex with Madonna without a condom. That’s great.

You know what I always admire about you, Norm? You like to set the tone right away. You like to come out and sort of set the table for everybody and say, this is what we’ll be doing. Very nice. Well, you know, you’ve got to be thinking of these all the time, right?

You’re doing the update. I call it the update gig. You don’t mind if I call it that. Yeah, the update gig, I do it. And to do that, I have to every day comb the papers, you know, comb them.

I don’t really call them. Figure of speech, yeah. And I read them. First I check the NBA lines for the night, you know, find out what I’m going to bet on.

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And then I go.

Straight to the news, you know, find out what news figure I’m going to skewer. So, interesting story I say this week is that on Rikers Island, they have banned, like two months ago, they banned pornography, any porno magazines from the prison. You know, because I don’t know why they did it, but now..

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And now I just read the headline.

Sure, you don’t need to know that part. Right. Who cares about that part? Right. But now they had to bring it back this week.

So they had a compromise. They’re allowing one porno magazine. Only one? Only one. Unfortunately, the porno magazine that they’re putting in is Hairy Guy’s Ass Illustrated.

Really? Well, if you’re going to only allow one, I would think that’s the one, you know, probably. In 1997, Norm Macdonald derailed an interview with Courtney Thorne Smith. She was there to promote a movie she’d made with Carrot Top. Norm Macdonald wouldn’t let the movie be discussed without making it worse, suggesting that the word bored in the title should be spelled B-O-R-E-D.

Thorne Smith covered her face. Conan fell out of his chair. She’s a beautiful lady and a talented, nice talk show guest. As evidenced by her appearance on our rival show. All right, well there’s this two hour season finale of Melrose Place.

There’s this movie coming out. Yes. Title undetermined at this point. Chairman of the Board. Oh, all right.

Do something with that, you freak. I bet the board is spelled B-O-R-E-D.

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And then there’s the moth joke, probably the most analyzed four minutes in th…

It aired on Conan’s Tonight Show in 2009. Norm was supposed to do one segment. He did it.

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And then Conan asked him during the break to stay for a second segment.

Norm had nothing prepared, nothing at all. A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office. A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office. You are correct. A moth goes into a podiatrist’s office and the podiatrist’s office says, what’s the problem?

And the moth says, what’s the problem? Where do I begin, man? He goes, I go to work for Gregory Alinovich and all day long I work. Honestly, Doc, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t even know if Gregory Alinovich knows anything.

He only knows that he has power over me, and that seems to bring him happiness. He remembered a 20-second joke he had heard from Colin Quinn and started telling it. Asking Conan how long the segment was and hoping the answer would be 20 seconds, Conan said seven minutes. So Norm took a 20-second joke about a moth and a podiatrist and in real time, without prep, turned it into seven minutes. He says, Doc, sometimes I feel like a spider, even though I’m a moth.

Just barely hanging on to my web with an everlasting fire underneath me. I’m not feeling good. And so the doctor says, moth, man, you’re troubled. But you should be seeing a psychiatrist. Why on earth did you come here?

And then the moth said, because the light was on. Conan’s laugh at the end is the laugh of someone genuinely surprised by something rather than the professional host laugh that, you know, sounds like a laugh. You see a lot of that on Late Night. Conan said that Norm did the joke on the fly. His way to show it down was to invent a Chekhov play with Russian names and ineffable sadness.

That’s what he came up with in the commercial break with nothing prepared. Then there’s the Bob Saget roast appearance in 2008. Norm got up and told gentle jokes, not accidentally gentle, deliberately aggressively gentle. Jokes from an old joke book, the kind of jokes your grandfather might tell, disconnected from anything edgy. The room didn’t know what to do with it.

Jim Norton was there, and he said watching it was like watching Henry Fonda pick blueberries, which is very Norton and a great description of what it looked like. Bob, you have a lot of well-wishers here tonight, and a lot of them would like to throw you down one. Well. They want to murder you in a well. Seems a little harsh, but apparently they want to murder you in a well.

It says here on this card. Now, but Bob has a beautiful face, like a flower. Yeah, cauliflower. No offense, but Your face looks like a cauliflower. As you can see, he has wavy hair.

It’s waving goodbye on account he’s going bald. No, I think that Bob should join the Ku Klux Klan. And that’s not because he’s racist. He’s not racist. It’s just that he’d look a lot better with a hood over his head on account of his face.

For Norm, it was a perfectly constructed meta-joke about the roast format itself delivered so straight that the audience either had to get it or watch it go completely over their head, which is Norm. I’m a huge fan of Norm Macdonald’s album Ridiculous. It’s a sketch album. I’ll call out a couple bits here. My favorite favorite is The Fantastic Four.

Spoilers, the setup here is everybody gets a cool nickname except Mr. Fantastic. Ben Grimm? You are a rock-like thing of a man. You will be called The Thing.

Great. Sue Storm, you’re a woman who has the power to make herself invisible. The Invisible Woman is your name from now on. Good. Johnny Storm, you are human, and yet you are a torch.

Yeah. The Human Torch. The Human Torch. Okay. And I, Reed Richards, can stretch my body like a rubber band.

I will be Mr. Fantastic. Okay, let’s get on to business. First order of business for the Fantastic Four. Dr.

Doom has the entire world’s plutonium supply. Excuse me for a second. Yes, Ben. Never mind, never mind. What is it, Ben?

It’s nothing, it’s nothing, nothing. Ben, we have to speak openly here. Well, it’s just about the names. Do you like yours or the thing? No, I’m fine with that.

It just seems a little.. Well, I’m kind of a thing of a man. You’re calling me the thing. Sue is a woman who can become invisible. She’s the invisible woman.

Makes sense. Johnny is human, yet a torch. So he’s the human torch, right? Sure. And you can stretch your arms like a rubber band.

And you’ve named yourself Mr. Fantastic. Yes, it’s fantastic. Another great sketch is the gambling sportscaster. Let’s take a quick listen to that.

The Jacksonville Jaguars play host to the New York Jets. And Danny, the Jaguars come into this game as big favorites. But will they live up to the hype? Well, they are big favorites, Jim. No doubt about that.

Nine and a half points to be exact. Now, what that means is if a person bet the Jaguars on a parlay with, let’s say, Cincinnati, who, as we know, won earlier today. That would pay that person 13 to 5. So, if a person had bet, let’s say, $ 127, 000, that would pay off $ 457, 200. That would cover any bad wagers that that person would have made in the past.

Why, it’s like wiping the slate clean, Jim. That person would be even for the first time in his life. Well, there’s no question the Jaguars are a powerhouse offense. But let’s be honest, this football team is only as good as its quarterback, Mark Brunel. No doubt about that, Jim.

When Brunel is healthy, the Jags are unbeaten and, furthermore, have covered the spread each and every time. Now, without Brunel, they have eaten it and eaten it hard. So with a healthy Brunel out there today, that parlay looks to be money in the bank. But is he healthy? That has to be the big question mark here today.

Well, I have to disagree with you there, Jim. I have heard absolutely no one question this young quarterback’s health. Well, Danny, I ran into him at the hotel this morning, and to me, he looked pale. He complained of stomach pains and nausea. He had, in a nutshell, flu-like symptoms.

Ha! Are you kidding? Brunel’s looking great out there. He will easily cover the spread. Easily.

Very easily. Flu. What are you, a doctor? What are you, suddenly Dr. Jim Lampley?

And I also like Stan and Lois. Hey, if Lois Lane only knew that you were Superman, in no time you would be having sex with her. Hmm. Then and there, Stan Hooper began to hatch a plot. He would convince Lois Lane that Superman’s secret identity was in fact Stan Hooper, not Clark Kent.

Then and only then could he realize his fiendish dream of seeing Lois Lane naked. Oh, my God, look out the window. There’s a meteor headed right towards Metropolis. Great Caesar’s ghost. If only Superman were here.

Excuse me, I have to make a phone call. You do? Oh. Hey, hey, Lois. What, Stan?

Listen, I gotta go make a phone call. Okay. Huh? Yeah, I’ll be back probably after that meteor thing’s settled, all right? All right, all right.

All right, then. Away I go. There’s Superman! Superman punches the meteor. With one mighty blow and sends it careening back into space.

As he flies away, Stan Hooper stands cowering in a hallway. Ready for Superman! And in a flash, Superman changes back into mild-mannered Clark Kent and enters the room. What did I miss while I was on the phone? Only the biggest story of the week, Kent.

Strange how whenever there’s trouble, Clark, you always seem to be gone. I know, Lois. I was on the phone. Hey, guys, I’m back. Ha, I’m out of breath.

Oh, my goodness, my fists hurt from that meteor. Or, um, that is to say, phone. Are you all right, Stan? Sure, I’m fine. No reason to be suspicious.

No reason at all to be suspicious. Hey, Lois, you look real nice in that thing you’re wearing there. Ridiculous came out in 2006. I can’t believe that’s 20 years ago. It’s maybe my favorite comedy album.

It’s really fantastic. There’s the Based on a True Story memoir from 2016, a fictionalized account of his own life that shares the same name, Norm MacDonald, as the protagonist, and then departs from any verifiable fact.. While maintaining the first-person voice of an autobiography. He described it in interviews as the true story of his life, with some things changed, which is not a.. That’s an understatement.

And then there’s his final special, and if you haven’t seen this, you gotta put this on tonight. Nothing special. June 2020, the night before going in for a medical procedure, which outcome he wasn’t sure about, he set up a camera in his living room, put on headphones, a handheld mic, and did an hour of stand-up in one take. No audience, dog barking somewhere off-camera, his phone rang during it, he picked it up, said, I gotta call you back because I’m doing a special, hung up and kept going. It was the material he had intended to record in front of a live audience at some point, but COVID had delayed things, and then his health got worse, and he wanted to put it on tape just in case, and his instincts were correct.

The procedure went fine, Norm Macdonald recovered, The tape was forgotten about, and then 14 months later he passed away. The tape existed, so Netflix and the team released it in May 22 as Norm MacDonald Nothing Special. It’s 50 minutes. One take. Dog.

Phone. He makes jokes about writing a living will. He makes jokes about his family’s eagerness to pull the plug if he wound up in a coma. He never mentions the cancer directly. The special ends and then cuts to a roundtable of six people who had gathered to watch it for the first time together.

David Letterman, Dave Chappelle, Conan O’Brien, Adam Sandler, David Spade, and Molly Shannon. None of them knew the special existed until shortly before they watched it. Most of them cried. In 2011, 10 years before he died, two years before he was diagnosed, Norm did a bit about his uncle who had cancer. The joke?

I’m pretty sure. I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure if you die, the cancer dies at the same time. That’s not a loss. That’s a draw. That’s your comedy news for today.

When I was young, there was a fella, went by the name of.. Jacques de Gauthier. And he was from Témiscamingue, Quebec. And Jacques de Gauthier, he was a fella that really thought. And he was smart, you know, he was our hope, I guess.

We were all, you know, we pinned our, all of Témiscamingue, Quebec pinned our hopes on you. Now, that’s a hell of a burden for a man to have a town’s hope pinned. On them, isn’t it, Conan? It is a lot. Big burden.

So he was feeding these baby dolphins, you know, and I said, I’m ashamed of you, Jacques Zagatineau. You could have done so many great things. And he said, well, he said, I think I’m serving a youthful porpoise. Now, I believe that.. Now..

No. I knew that was going to happen. I knew that was going to happen. You don’t encourage that. That was a 40 minute story.

It’s like somebody. Youthful purpose. Youthful purpose. Yes.

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Featured: Joe Rogan, Shane Gillis, Kevin Hart, Eric Andre, Chet Hanks, Tom Hanks, Bert Kreischer

What’s in This Episode

• Joe Rogan Spotify renewal $250 million deal
• Shane Gillis hosting Saturday Night Live
• Kevin Hart sex tape witness involvement in court battle
• Chet Hanks confronts Eric Andre at Los Angeles Comic-Con
• Bert Kreischer comedy cruise details and college fund offer

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. We’ll leave Sebastian behind us for now. I talked about it in a bonus episode Thursday afternoon in case you missed that. Big one this weekend, Shane Gillis is your host of Saturday Night Live. They’ve kind of stopped doing the funny sketch trailers they used to do.

Now the host and the musical actress kind of come out and go like, hi, I’m Shane Gillis. I’m hosting Saturday Night Live this weekend. So.. Really nothing to play for you there. Big news on Thursday afternoon.

Joe Rogan has renewed his deal with Spotify. The Wall Street Journal says the deal is $ 250 million. In a statement, Joe Rogan said the partnership with Spotify has been an amazing fit and they’re incredible to work with. I’m extremely happy and excited to continue with them for years to come. The podcast has 18 million followers on Spotify, making it the most followed podcast on the platform and approximately 18 million more followers than I have.

It has been the most listened to podcast in the U.S. Since 2019. Here’s a headline for you from TMZ. Kevin Hart’s sex tape partner may be dragged into his court battle. I mean, right off the headline there, you got to pay attention.

TMZ writes, the woman in the infamous sex tape with Kevin Hart could be dragged into one of the comedian’s ongoing court battles. TMZ has learned. According to court docs obtained by TMZ, Kevin Hart’s former assistant was once involved in the sex tape controversy in 2017 to testify as a witness in her case against Kevin Hart. That person had sued Kevin for $ 60 million in 2019, making some claims. Kevin denied the claims.

The case was eventually dismissed. Tom Hanks’ son Chet Hanks confronted comedian Eric Andre for quote-unquote trashing him. Security got involved. This also from TMZ. They had a video.

Chet Hanks, the 36-year-old son of Tom Hanks, was seen approaching Eric Andre from behind at the Los Angeles Complex Con. All right. We were told Eric Andre initially looked pleased to see Chet Hanks and held out his hand and said, what’s up? But Chet Hanks did not return the handshake. TMZ says he kept his hand on Andre’s shoulder as he spoke, leading Eric Andre to ask, What’d I say?

TMZ says both men removed their glasses as the back and forth took a heated turn. They began screaming at each other, and then Eric Andre’s security intervened and swept him away. Eric Andre has security? Why? Really?

Or is this just like convention security? Why would Eric Andre have security? TMZ further reports that Chet Hanks detailed the interaction on Instagram, writing, finally ran into Eric effing Andre and mocked the actor for traveling with four security guards, quote, because the environment makes him uneasy. Four guards? Hmm.

I’m a neutral here, but specific to security, I’m just curious about four security guards for Eric Andre? Wear a baseball cap and glasses like everybody else, dude. Chet Hanks went on to reference his 2023 appearance on Eric Andre’s show, which apparently has started this feud. Chet wrote, he had, caps, no memory whatsoever of trashing me to the media after I outshined him on his show. After being sheltered by his security team, he began foaming at the mouth and admitted it was because he had a problem with me mocking Caribbean culture when I did my Jamaican accent all those years ago.

Chet continued, who knew that in addition to the brain rot and poop joke humor he’s known for, Eric is also such a passionate cultural activist running into Eric.. One, two, three, four, five exclamation points. Eric Andre’s rep did not respond for comment. Now, apparently in 2023, Rolling Stone asked Eric Andre about this. Eric’s quote in 2023 apparently is, he broke us down.

He stole a motorcycle and rode it around. He almost knocked a bunch of grips and gaffers off their ladders. Chet wrote back on social media with a video of said incident, writing he wanted to match Eric Andre’s, quote, weird outlandish troll energy. He recalled at the time, at one point he has a dude come up and jump a dirt bike on the stage he must not have known. I ride dirt bikes because I picked that stuff up and started riding it around the set.

Everybody’s like, no, no, don’t do that. You could get hurt. I’m like, chill. I just popped a little wheelie. This is fascinating.

Chet remembered I put the bike down. Now he wants to come out and talk crap about me. You mustn’t like the fact that I outshined you on your own bleeping show. After Tom Hanks’ son Chet Hanks blasted him as a weirdo, Rick Andre jumped down on Instagram and wrote, Guys, everything Chet said about me is an effing boldface lie, effing liar, and I dare him to take an effing DNA test to prove that Tom Hanks is his effing father. Wow, that’s fun.

Bert Kreischer says there should be no rules on his upcoming comedy cruise, the money quote, We Make Pirates Look Soft. If you would like to cruise with Bert Kreischer, you can go from Miami to Cozumel beginning on November 19th. Bert Kreischer, who’s 53 now, was asked, what is more dangerous to give him a microphone, a Netflix budget, or a cruise ship? Bert Kreischer said, oh, cruise ship without a doubt. We make pirates look soft.

We drank out of vodka the first night we left last time, the first night. They had to send a chase boat to an island to come back with vodka to meet us up in the morning because we still had a full day of sailing. The 53-year-old man said, the unpredictable is the thing I look forward to the most. That’s the fun of these cruises, is that there should be no rules. The beauty of that cruise is there’s no predictability about what’s going to happen.

Bert heard that some people made some babies on the first cruise, and he says, now, anyone that got pregnant on the first cruise, I started college funds for their kids, and I’ll do it again. If you get pregnant on that cruise, I’ll start a college fund for that kid. It’s a light lift. It’s $ 1, 000. I put it into an IRA.

It earns its money. The kid’s got college tuition when he’s 18. I would have to check the math on that. That’s it? I put $ 1, 000 in the bank, and 18 years later, I could pay for college?

What college? You know what? I’m fact-checking that. Well, Bert Kreischer, I asked ChatGPT, is this math right?

And then threw Bert Kreischer’s quote into it.

ChatGPT says, if they meet a one-time $ 1, 000 investment at birth, that’s a big overstatement. After 18 years, assuming annual compound growth, and the AI did some math, if you got a 5% return.. At age 18, Bert Kreischer’s $ 1, 000 would be $ 2, 407 for what college you want to go to with your $ 2, 400. At 7%, you’d have $ 3, 380. And at 10%, you’d have $ 5, 560 to go to your college of choice.

Thanks to Bert Kreischer, you have almost $ 6, 000 in tuition, maybe if the market rocks for 18 years. But hey, it was a good quote to give to the article people. The 53-year-old man said, I never in a million years, even the day I opened that Rolling Stone article on April 1st, 1997, which was the 20th century, over a quarter century ago when Burt Krasher was partying. The 53-year-old man said, I never in a million years thought that this would be my life. If he had advice for his younger self, he said, if I could sit next to him and be like, yo, this all works out.

And then he’d be like, wait, what do I have to change? And I’d say nothing. Lean into it. Don’t quit drinking. As a matter of fact, you’re going to own a vodka company.

You’re going to have a cruise. You’re going to write a book. You’re going to be an actor. You’re going to be a comedian. You’re going to have a podcast.

You’re going to own a 5K. There’s no part of that kid’s journey that should get me here. Fully loaded at sea, November 19th through the 23rd. Sounds like a party. Hey, I got something for you to try out.

You know how, like, everybody, even me, has a podcast, and some people have podcast ideas for something they don’t actually make? This is for them. The company that makes this podcast has made a thing called Linit. Linit is a podcast studio that lives in your browser. You write the podcast, you can voice it, you can add music and video, edit, publish, all in one place.

It can even build you a first draft of an episode while you go make a sandwich. It’s in beta right now, and we want you to try it out until November. Things might break. Please log into it and break it. Make a podcast.

See what happens. Shoot me a nasty note and be like, you promoted this Linnet thing and it’s not working. We want you to test it. That’s the idea. That’s what a beta test is.

Go to linnetmedia.com. That’s L-I-N-N-E-T media.com. Linnetmedia.com. L-I-N-N-E-T media.com. Try it out.

Make a podcast. You know you want to. And it is Friday, and once again, time for the Comedy Stock Market. Comedy Stock Market. We’ll be right back.

We should probably buy stock in Joe Rogan. He decided a $ 250 million deal. See what I’m doing here? Okay, so here are the recommendations. We’re going to buy stock in the Norm MacDonald estate.

Next week is the new Netflix documentary. And on this feed tomorrow is the deep dive, weekly deep dive. I’m doing Norm MacDonald tomorrow to get in front of that documentary on Netflix that I think is going to do really well. I say that because even my college students know who Norm MacDonald is. Even Sebastian Maniscalco still plays Norm Macdonald’s comedy.

That’s how powerful and great Norm Macdonald was, that even Sebastian is still playing him. You know what I’m saying? So we’re going to buy some Norm Macdonald. We’re going to buy some Liz Mealy for getting this whole thing started, starting the little kerfluffle there, drawing attention to what’s happening there at my ex-girlfriend’s place. I’m not going there today.

We’re not talking about that. But good job, Liz Mealy. And for this same reason, we are selling our stock in Sebastian Maniscalco. I don’t think he’s doing anything nefarious. I doubt he even knew what was going on till it hit his radar in a hit the fan kind of way.

However, the casual. The people that aren’t recording podcasts in their basement the people that aren’t reading the trays or vulture or websites or on threads all day those people are going to be like sebastian maniscalco isn’t he the guy that got rid of all those comedians and sebastian you put your name on the thing And that’s what happened. The buck stops with you. So we will buy Joe Rogan, buy Norm MacDonald, buy Liz Mealy, and we will sell Sebastian Maniscalco. That is the comedy stock market on this Friday.

And let me leave you with this one. This has been cracking me up. Whatever you think of Mayor Mamdani, this is the level of crime that we’re dealing with in New York City. I’m this old. And I grew up in the horrible 1970s in New York City where I was terrified as a kid to go on the subway and the subway cars were covered with graffiti and we had the subway vigilante and then we had guardian angels protect us from the other bad guys.

Now here in 2026, we are worried about sidewalk chalk. And there is comedy involved with this. From the New York Post, a petty turf war has stirred up a quiet Queens neighborhood where a comedy club owner has been on a crusade to get rid of the creep who’s been dousing her sidewalk chalk designs with bleach. Hannah has been using public sidewalk outside her QED Astoria spot since the beginning of the summer to draw colorful advertisements for the club’s charity events, including Children’s Story Time and comedy shows and almost immediately the quote-unquote king of Clorox showed up and dumped a bottle of bleach across the pavement until the chalk drawings dissolved apparently the king of Clorox does not like her little colorful drawings but they’re advertisements on a public sidewalk it’s a public sidewalk you can draw I can spill my water welcome to New York City I don’t know what town you think this is you’re lucky leave it alone John okay and it sold the New York Post and I thought maybe it was a disgruntled teenager or something, but no, turns out he’s a fully grown man. However, the cops can’t do anything about it because it’s legal behavior.

Website QNS, as in Queens, said as soon as there was a drawing, a man swung by 23rd Avenue to wipe away the art after gorging on a bagel from the nearby bagel shop. This is fantastic. They have the bagel muncher Bleach King caught on video. This is Queens, New York City, where I grew up, and boy.. 30 years ago, we had a different kind of crime. Did you know Miami Vice went to Jackson Heights, where I grew up?

Miami Vice. You know why Crockett and Tubbs went to Miami Vice? For the cocaine. You could have drawn on the street all you wanted and bleached it out. We were worried about the coke dealers, and now we’re worried about this nonsense?

Come on. And according to this report, a detective suggested she stopped doing the chalk. I love this guy. And that is your comedy news for today. Tomorrow, deep dive on Norm MacDonald.

Sunday, a normal episode. Monday, normal episode. Thank you for following. It was a crazy week around here, and I’ll catch you in the morning.

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Featured: Sebastian Maniscalco, Dane Cook, Jeff Dunham, Shane Gillis, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle, Liz Mealy, Gianmarco Ceresi, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, Andrew Schultz, Norm Macdonald

What’s in This Episode

• Sebastian Maniscalco responds to Raw Dog comedy channel controversy
• SiriusXM removes Raw Dog channel from Raw Dog 8
• Sebastian Maniscalco Comedy Radio launch and playlist strategy
• Johnny Mac discusses radio programming methodology and A-B-C rotation system
• Controversy over comedians removed from rotation on SiriusXM
• SiriusXM insider response about evolving channel programming

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Sebastian Maniscalco has addressed Raw Dog 8, as I’m calling it. Let’s start with Sebastian, then I have a lot of thoughts and I want to go slowly. Here’s Sebastian Maniscalco. This goes out to all my fellow comedians.

I want to let you know that I heard you. I support you. I love you. I know how hard the grind is. Believe me, I’ve been there.

But I wanted to let you know that I had nothing to do with removing the raw comedy from SiriusXM. That was a SiriusXM decision. But I also want to let you know that I’m going to work with SiriusXM to highlight a variety of different voices in stand-up comedy, from emerging to established to newcomers and everything in between. I just ask that you give me a little time, guys. I just got here, and I needed a little time to build out the channel.

So I just want to let you know that I heard you and just give me some time and be patient. And I think you’ll like the result. God bless everybody. Please give me one second to do some quick housekeeping. I didn’t address this this morning for reasons I’ve said on the podcast.

I was out of pocket yesterday and I teach a class on Thursday morning. It is now 137 in the afternoon and I just had a chance to take in all the latest. As for, let me go up a level. We’re going to go slowly today. My old mentor taught me about, he called it Steinbrenner, and here’s what he meant by this.

Back in the day, George Steinbrenner owned the New York Yankees, and George Steinbrenner would react to things and make trades and give players to the manager that maybe the manager didn’t want. What my old mentor meant by that was, from afar, it’s easy to nitpick a radio station and be like, this station sucks, the boss is stupid, why aren’t they doing X? And what you don’t know sometimes is what information you don’t have. Maybe my old mentor knew that, oh, this talent is better than that talent. I should have that talent on in the afternoon.

He knows this. You guys are on message boards saying, oh, the radio station sucks. Why are they so stupid? But what you don’t know is that Steinbrenner gave somebody a three year million dollar contract. And if somebody has a three year million dollar contract, they’re going to play in the outfield or they’re going to host afternoon drive.

So as we pick this apart here, there may be information we don’t have. There might not be, but there may be just information we don’t have. Let’s start with Sebastian’s, is it an apology statement? It’s not an apology. It’s a statement.

He needs some time. Sebastian, I don’t think so. The channel was announced in April. Today is October 8th. What time do you need?

For newer listeners discovering this podcast through this topic, I programmed the Raw Dog channel from 2004 to 2014. I did the logs. Maybe not every day, but I’m pretty confident I did more than 90% of the logs day to day for most of that time until I got promoted to VP, then somebody else on my staff did it. But I’m very familiar with how Raw Dog was programmed 2004 to 2014 because I was in charge of the rotations. Let me walk you through very quickly..

At a top level, how I teach it to college students. And I did this briefly the other day, but I want to go longer here. Okay. We’re going to have a bucket of comedians. We can play any comedian in the world.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to make three buckets. We’ll call the buckets A, B, and C. The letters don’t mean anything. It can be X, Y, Z, red, white, blue, whatever you want, but let’s call it A, B, C. In bucket A, I’m going to have a smaller bucket of comedians and In my case, when I would program, that would be the hits.

So in 2008, maybe the hits were Dane Cook and Jeff Dunham. If I were programming a channel today using an ABC rotation, maybe Shane Gillis, Bill Burr, Dave Chappelle would be in the A’s. The B bucket is a bigger bucket. In that bucket, I personally would have people like Liz Mealy, Gianmarco Cerezi, whoever you think today’s comedians are that aren’t household names but are awesome comedians. They would go in the B category.

And there would be more B’s than A’s because as people circle in and out of getting into their car or listening to stuff, I would want them to hear the hits. I want them to tune into my station and be like, oh, they play Dave Chappelle. They play Shane Gillis. I know those guys. But along the way, once you’ve bought in, the next clip comes on and you go, oh, who’s this funny woman?

I don’t know who that is.

And then you learn that you like a Liz Mealy.

You learn that you like a Gianmarco Ceresi or whoever you like these days. Then you could have a C category with older stuff. And that’s where I might put George Carlin or Joan Rivers or even a Bob Hope. And honestly, I saw a playlist the other day. They had two cuts from each other, Andrew Schultz and Bob Hope.

I’m not sure Bob Hope belongs on this station at all. And I love Bob Hope. I talked about that already. OK, so Sebastian says he needs time. Unless someone deleted the clips from the system, and they may have, and this is where I say Steinbrenner, I don’t know.

I also don’t know what they’re using to schedule records or sound recordings is the term. I don’t know what they’re using these days. I haven’t asked anybody. I haven’t listened to Raw Dog since I was asked to no longer program Raw Dog. Someone else has done it.

Sure, they’ve done a good job. Not here to bash on them. Unless someone deleted the clips, and I can’t think of a reason why you would delete the clips, I.. You can just schedule them as inactive. So back to ABC, let’s have a category called Rest for R.

If you don’t want to play all these comedians that aren’t currently being played, you could just move them to R and let them sit there and never schedule an R record. Maybe they were all deleted. If they were deleted, then you’re going to have to put back in the metadata and it’s going to take a minute. If they haven’t been deleted, if they’re still in the system.. If Sebastian Maniscalco called me up and said, hey, as of tomorrow, can you add a new category?

We’ll call it Z. And can you put all these working class comedians, as we’re calling them, can you put them back on the clock and add a couple Zs every hour? Three, four Zs, eight Zs, whatever amount of Zs Sebastian wants. I could easily do that in 2013 with the technology I had in 2013. Again, to be fair to the Steinbrenners, I don’t know what they have or don’t.

Just telling you in 2013, if Sebastian called me and said, I want this fixed tomorrow, I I could fix it tomorrow. The more I think about this, I suspect there was a meeting and it went something like this. Hey, Sebastian, what comedians do you like? You know, I like all the greats. I like Carlin and Joan Rivers and, you know, more contemporary guys like Norm Macdonald was great.

And, you know, maybe he mentioned some comedians he was into. And I think just looking at this from afar. Someone took that as gospel and made that the playlist. That’s just a guess from a guy in a basement recording a podcast. An insider at SiriusXM tells Entertainment Weekly that programming on all channels is ever-evolving, and Maniscalco’s is no different.

Comics at all levels are consistently being added, and those who may have found themselves out of rotation on Sebastian Maniscalco Comedy Radio can likely be heard on other SiriusXM comedy channels. I haven’t listened to SiriusXM. I have no idea what’s on the other comedy channels. Specific to comedians consistently being added and deleted? Absolutely.

I did that all the time. Maybe once a week-ish when new stuff came in, we added it. As stuff got tired, if a new hot comedian came along, we would move them to A. Things would move from the A category to the B category. You would rest things, rotate things in and out to keep the station fresh.

That’s totally normal. A spokesperson tells Deadline in an exclusive statement, quote, Sirius XM has proudly supported the comedy community, and we’ve been listening to comedians speak out this week. Our decision to end raw comedy was due to the channel’s underperformance and came prior to Sebastian joining the Sirius XM lineup. While the challenges facing working comedians are bigger than any one person or decision, we remain committed, as we have for more than two decades, to making Sirius XM and Sebastian Maniscalco’s comedy radio a place where comedians at every stage of their careers can be heard. At some point, somebody, whether it’s Sebastian or a programmer or was me, someone is deciding, hey, I want to play this comedian or I don’t want to play this comedian.

And if you choose not to play the comedian, that comedian doesn’t get royalties. I’m not sure that is Sebastian’s problem. I hear you and I understand why it was important, but I’m not sure that was really his problem. Let’s take a break there and I’ll come back. There’s an essay in the LA Times.

Let me just do some quick housekeeping. As I mentioned, I had a very busy Wednesday, which is why I didn’t discuss this this morning and didn’t discuss it until now. I also don’t think I’ll talk about it on the Friday podcast. I still haven’t put that together. Maybe I’ll find a couple of new stories.

I don’t know. And I also kind of want to get off this topic because I’m torn here because I’m close to it because I kind of know how it works. I’m not looking to get in a whistling match with Sebastian or whoever’s programming the channel now. I actually don’t know who programs the channel now. Again, you’re asking me to comment on my ex-girlfriend and My ex-girlfriend is out there somewhere being happy, and I’m happy in my life, and I don’t think about her, and it’s all good.

That’s why I don’t want to really dive in on this. But when every major comedian is putting out a video and I host a podcast called Daily Comedy News, I kind of have to talk about it. So that’s where I am with this, and I’ve just had a very busy week, but I do want to just address that Sebastian addressed it, which is why today’s bonus episode. Okay, from the LA Times, an essay from Christina Catherine Martinez. She writes..

Setting aside any appeal about the lives of working comics, squeezing out the middle class of any industry is its death knell. The consolidation of voices at the top kettles the audience into a dead end of diminishing options until we’re all paying $ 500 to hear a Gen Xer with the complexion of a vintage handbag stomp around in an arena, spouting the vaguest outline of a worldview, and we will be fooled into believing that’s the best or worst thing comedy has to offer. Without getting into the nuance of her opinion there, I think spiritually, we are aligned. I.. Don’t know why you wouldn’t want to play the comedians that I’ve named, checked, and the working class comedians.

I think that’s the interesting part. I host on the Live One app a weekly program called The Weekly Comedy Thing, and every week I play, I go out of my way to do a segment of, here are some comedians you might not know. And as I’ve hosted that show for over a decade, at one point, one of the comedians you didn’t know was a guy named Sebastian Maniscalco. One of the comedians you didn’t know is a guy named Nate Bergetzi. And so on and so on.

I go in, I see what is in the new release bin, as I call it, and I try and play people like that. I think that’s the interesting part. It’s very easy to go, here’s Chris Rock. Sure. And Chris Rock is great.

But to me, the interesting part are the working class comedians. That LA Times also quotes a post from Nick Vetterod, who wrote, Sebastian’s so busy, I’d be surprised if he even knew he has an XM channel. I wouldn’t go that far. But I bet he was quite surprised to find out that he was dragged into this because I can’t believe Sebastian woke up and said, yeah, I don’t want to play those working class comedians anymore. Get them off my channel.

Again, I think he just said, yeah, you know, I like Carlin and the greats. And somebody took that as gospel would be my guess. Back to my Steinbrenner point. I don’t know. That same piece in the L.A.

Times quotes comedian Jasmine Ellis, who said the beauty of the Raw channel is that it was kind of this catch all for people who didn’t fit neatly into the other categories. Raw was a channel dedicated to people who were focused on the art form of stand-up without restrictions. When I programmed the channel, it was called Raw Dog Comedy Uncensored. It’s all right there for you. That’s all you need to know.

Cracked wondered, what will the Sebastian Maniscalco drama mean for Marcelo Hernandez? I’m not going to get into my opinions on Marcelo Hernandez being funny or not. Look, this is too small for Saturday Night Live to deal with. They’re not going to deal with it. SNL doesn’t need to get involved in this controversy.

So if there was any chance of Sebastian hosting SNL in the relatively near future, that ain’t going to happen yet. But again, Shane Gillis is hosting this week. Give anything time. Cracked wrote that the ongoing controversy is pretty inside baseball for a show that caters to an audience of roughly 8 million viewers per episode. This did hit my wife’s radar.

Now, my wife is married to me, so maybe she paid more attention to it than if I were a dentist. I don’t know. But my wife was aware of this. So this is somewhat out there, but I do think it’s too small for SNL. Cracked also said the Maniscalco sketches from last season hit so hard because Maniscalco is completely irrelevant to the premise.

Then there’s the issue of SNL’s legendary fence-sitting. Speaking out against one of the most powerful broadcasting corporations and an internationally beloved comic over a business decision doesn’t really seem like a Lorne Michaels move. I think Cracked has nailed that there. And that is your bonus episode for Thursday. We’ll be back in the morning again.

If you’re just discovering this podcast through this, welcome. I put out an episode seven days a week. I hope you will continue to listen. And as this story develops, I will address it as needed. See you in the morning.

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Featured: Chris Rock, Will Smith, Adam Sandler, Rick Rubin, Shane Gillis, Bill Burr, Joe Rogan, Mark Zuckerberg, Nate Bargatze, Pete Davidson, Leslie Jones

What’s in This Episode

• Chris Rock New York Times interview on ‘Bring the Pain’ and modern comedy censorship
• Chris Rock discusses the Will Smith slap incident
• Bill Burr refuses lunch with Mark Zuckerberg over podcast independence
• Nate Bargatze Ford Motor Company spokesperson deal and F-150 Raptor R order
• Pete Davidson on Mayor Mamdani and Staten Island politics
• Leslie Jones Colorado State University basketball to comedy career transition
• New podcast ‘Jokes on News’ from former Late Show with Stephen Colbert writers

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hi there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Chris Rock did a really interesting interview with the New York Times. Chris said, He named names. Adam Sandler, Rick Rubin. You’re like, how many things are you doing right now?

And some people are better with their kids than me, but I think I’m a good dad. He is the director of the new movie Misty Green. The Times said the movie makes Hollywood look very appealing because of the talent there and the love people have for doing what they do. But it also makes Hollywood seem awful. Racist, sexist, chipping away at your soul.

Has that been your experience, Chris Rock? Chris said, you’re not going to get a how bad Hollywood is soliloquy from me. I always say every generation laughs at their children’s racism. So my kids are like, this is racist. And I roll my eyes.

And what I would call racist, my mother would laugh at. Are there bad parts about Hollywood? Yes. Clean that up a little bit. Apparently, Chris mentioned that he didn’t think he’d be able to make Bring the Pain today.

The Times was curious if he really believes that. Chris said, You’re right. I’d be able to make it. As a matter of fact, I’ll go even further. Bring the Pain would be bigger today.

You know why? Because you wouldn’t be able to report on it. The New York Times wouldn’t be able to say it was great. It wouldn’t be on Netflix. It would be like the Shane Gillis thing, which was actually elevated.

You know, the New York Times has got a weird thing with comedy. The Times is like, what’s the weird thing? Rock said the Times Journal, they ignore the nuance. So it’s like this is the manosphere conservative thing or this is the wokey woke thing.

And then all the people in the middle, they kind of ignore.

I remember five, 10 years ago, Bill Burr sold out MSG. At that point, maybe eight comedians had sold out the garden. I wake up the next day. I want to read the review. There’s no review because Bill Burr is this guy that walks a crazy line.

Is he conservative? Maybe. Wait a minute. He’s got a black wife. Oh, he’s sexist.

Wait a minute. There’s a lot of women here. You guys aren’t with that middle. So anyway, bring the pain would be bigger today because it would be less lauded. Interesting.

They asked him about the slap. You may recall he was slapped one time by Will Smith. Rock said, I’m good. That was so long ago. I wish everyone well.

I’ve moved on with my life. We’ll pick at that article for the next few days. Chris Rock is also on the New York Times interview podcast if you want to listen to it. Did Bill Burr shade Joe Rogan? Some people think so.

Bill Burr was on the red carpet at the Social Reckoning premiere. Burr told Variety he would not sit down for lunch with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Why not, Bill Burr? He said, nothing’s free. You don’t want to have a relationship.

That’s why you never have any of these people on your podcast, because then all of a sudden you have a friendship and you can’t make fun of them. Some people think that was a dig at Rogan. Controversial mega comedian Nate Bregazzi caught up with the Detroit Free Press. He said, I don’t even know what time it is. His handler said that it wasn’t yet noon.

Nate has a handler. Nate said it’s not noon. It could be four or five o’clock. I don’t know. We got in here late last night because I had a show in Mississippi and then it was four hours sleep.

But I feel great. It’s been fun. We’re told that Nate’s met with a small group of reporters donning black docker like pants. That was Nate’s not to the reporters. We’re all wearing dockers.

I don’t know what they were wearing. Nate also wore a black sweater and a casual gray zip up jacket, an outfit he could have bought at any Kohl’s store. When people ask to take a picture with him, he says, I’d love to. And we are told his love of Ford vehicles is real. As you know, he’s a spokesperson now.

We learn that Nate drives a 2021 Bronco with a manual transition, noting my daughter wants this Bronco. She’s 14, so I want her to learn how to drive a stick shift. I think it’ll help with not texting when driving because you got a lot going on. I got a quote from Nate here that this is actually take three. I keep tripping over it because the way he phrased it.

I’m going to slow down and read you the words in the order he said them. I haven’t done really commercials at all, and it’s because I was kind of waiting for this one to see if I could get this basically because it just made a lot of sense. I know what he’s saying there. I think the words could have been arranged differently. I don’t really want to just be on a bunch of commercials.

I really want to believe in the product. I want something to hopefully grow, and hopefully this is a very long relationship. I’m sure, Nate, you wouldn’t mind being the spokesperson for Ford for years. It probably pays well. Nate has ordered an F-150 Raptor R in Shelby Green.

The Raptor R, we’re told, is a high-performance off-road truck with a supercharged V8 engine. The controversial MAGA comedian said, I’ve never had a truck, and I’ve always wanted a truck. I mean, I really always wanted a truck because my aunt had like a Ford Ranger, and that was the car I was supposed to get when I was able to drive, but then she got it in a wreck, so I never got it. So finally, now. I come from a plant town.

It was a DuPont plant. Everybody there worked at that place and their dads worked there. Their grandfather. I love that is the American dream. It just kind of had this job with a reliable company.

So Ford is that to me. Then he compared Nate Land Company to the Ford Motor Company. Nate said, as we grow and build stuff, I want people to have jobs and I hope they can work there for as long as they want or they can work there and they go do other things or whatever. Pete Davidson spoke to Variety. They discussed Mayor Mamdani.

He’s the mayor of New York City. Pete Davidson said he doesn’t have a problem with Mamdani, but he doesn’t think that Mamdani is Staten Island at all. He added that Staten Island is the only red place in New York City. Pete said it’s violently red. I tried to explain it because most of my family’s on the red side.

It’s not like Storm the Capitol vibe. It’s not like a racist and misogynist sort of thing. It’s just like 1985 over there. You’re not a real Staten Island politician unless you have a secret family and no one mobster. I would not trust you to run Staten Island.

Interesting there. Leslie Jones talked about her time in Colorado. She transferred to Colorado State University in the mid-80s to follow a basketball coach. But after entering a comedy competition in Fort Collins, she gave up basketball for the stage. She remembered those early jokes.

I talked about my uncle. My uncle stuttered. I talked about black and white churches, the difference. Oh, and I talked about my grandmother’s boobs. Clean that up a little.

About her current tour, she says, this is one of my favorite sets I’ve ever done. All these jokes are jokes I wrote 20 years ago thinking that somebody else would perform them because I’m not talented enough. Colorado Public Radio is curious, you know, where the joke’s been. Or in a Google Doc or something? Leslie Jones said, it’s just stuff that’s been in the back of my head.

It’s stuff that comes forward when I’m writing and goes, hey, you know, you got this joke here that you’ve always wanted to do. Couple new podcast projects to tell you about. One is called Jokes on News. These are former writers of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert riffing on the news. I guess their brains are fired up to tell jokes about the news and they don’t have a show anymore.

The idea for Jokes on News came from Late Show news producer Catherine Shin, whose duties included sitting on the writing team at morning meetings where they’d make up ways to make even the worst news funny. Jokes on News runs for about 35 to 45 minutes, comes out once a week, and each episode, You’ll find a trademark blend of analysis and wisecracks that makes traditional late night so entertaining. Good time for me to plug the podcast Is Late Night Dead? That’s my podcast about late night. You’ll find it wherever you found this podcast.

Episode one was about 1230 Letterman. Episode two coming out on Sunday is about 1130 Letterman. It is called Is Late Night Dead? Check it out.

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Also out, a different podcast.

This is called Great Job News, a new biweekly news show written like The Daily Show and filmed like 30 Rock. It presents actual news along with comedy and entertainment. Rephrasing, it’s a comedy news show inside a sitcom about the making of that news show. Very meta. Each episode of Great Job News dives deep into the topics on everyone’s mind.

The insufferable news cycle, how body image is impossible to talk about yet plagues us all, and the collapse of modern society. Six episodes. Episode one out now. It’s called Panic in the Newsroom. When did the news turn into such a five-alarm trash fire?

Oh, I could tell you, but people were getting mad at me.

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Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the newsroom writers have an existential meltdo…

Marianne Ways had a really cool show recently. It was a one-off show, but the list was amazing. Kurt Braunohler, Joe Firestone, Wyatt Cenac, Aparna Nancherla, Roy Wood Jr. The ever-so-serious Hari Kondabolu, haven’t said his name in a while, and a bunch of others. Marianne is now working on a printed comedy zine called Stories from the Room, she explains.

In 2003, I accidentally stumbled into the East Village indie comedy scene. I immediately bought a camera and started documenting my nights at a bar called Riffify. I became a regular at Invite Them Up, a weekly show hosted by Eugene Merman and Bobby Tisdale. Stories from the Room will bring together those photos with memories of the people who worked there. You will see comedians like John Mulaney, Nick Kroll, Kristen Schaal, Jenny Slate.

Pete Holmes, many more. The zine will explore the history of NYC’s emerging indie comedy scene and the move away from clubs and into bars that started in the late 90s and early zeros. It was a great time for comedy. All right, so keep an eye out for Marianne Way’s printed comedy zine, Stories from the Room. And Vulture has been catching up with the comedians you should know and will know.

Did I get the title right? I can never remember. One of them is Grace Johnson. Grace Johnson was a corporate lawyer born in Nigeria, raised in New York. She was working on data law when the pandemic hit and she stumbled into comedy on Clubhouse, the audio only chatting app.

Remember that? That was like a thing for like three weeks. We were told Grace assembles jokes like layer cakes, alternating between personal and universal political activism and pure chill. Two quick questions with Grace Johnson. What do you think about the future of comedy?

She said, what’s exciting is seeing kind people win, watching the show Funny AF and seeing people I know and respect being successful, seeing black women and NB peeps have fun on stage, seeing genuine oddballs find their audiences. Josh Johnson’s newest. Being embraced. Audiences getting curious about comedy again and going outside to laugh together. Concerns.

People chasing laughs and relatability until they lose the point of view. That’s the fastest way to get bottom barrel thoughts. Stand-up is similar to a guided tour to a museum. You’re supposed to bring the audience into your world of curated experiences, then show them what to look at and how you want them to look at it. There’s nothing new under the sun, but at least show them something old in a new way.

I like that. The second question was, what’s the most earnest goal you have? She said to retire my mom, refurbish the school in my village named after my grandfather, pay off the student loans of me and everyone I love, and make Queen Latifah proud of me. That’s a pretty good list. And that is your comedy news for today.

I will see you tomorrow.

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Featured: John Mulaney, Jamie Foxx, Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien, Cat Williams, Kevin Hart, Dana Walden

What’s in This Episode

• John Mulaney postpones Victoria stand-up show due to unannounced TV commitment
• Jamie Foxx releases new special ‘Take Care of Yourself’ on Hulu and Disney Plus
• Jamie Foxx discusses impersonations and why he won’t do podcasts
• Jimmy Kimmel renewal uncertainty amid late-night business challenges
• Conan O’Brien discusses changing landscape of late-night TV and comedy writing

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Caloroga Shark Media. Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. This one’s interesting. John Mulaney’s stand-up show in Victoria has been postponed until next year. John was scheduled to perform November 12th at the Save-On Foods Memorial Center as part of his Mr.

Whatever tour. It was moved to March 5th, but here’s why it’s interesting. Quote, due to a soon-to-be-announced TV commitment.. I wonder if that is Mulaney hosting Saturday Night Live. I’m just guessing there.

Or is there a secret John Mulaney project to be announced? Interesting. My former co-worker Jamie Foxx has a new special out today on Hulu. I hate to tell Jamie what I think of the Hulu specials in case you’re new to this program. I tend to find that you get your Hulu special when you’re slightly past peak, but don’t tell Jamie I said that.

Take Care of Yourself will release on Hulu and Disney Plus today. Not that the Hulu publicist would send you any information about it, but I have learned that Take Care of Yourself builds on Jamie Foxx’s triumph over his health scare. Much like his previous special, but this one has fewer tears and more cracks. Jamie also has some jokes about Kim Kardashian and the president of the United States, as well as the people who voted for the president of the United States. The Hollywood Reporter caught up with Jamie and they asked him, hey, you got a lot of people with your impersonations early on, Denzel, LeBron, Chappelle.

Who’s going to be the first one to call you and say, why’d you do me like that? Fox said, LeBron. I just was on the phone with LeBron talking to him about going to Philly, which I’m glad he got a chance. The look was off in L.A. Because L.A.

Loves Kobe so much. Philly’s perfect for him, though. He even looks Philly with that beard. L.A. ‘s a little more light-skinned. L.A.

Was too brave for LeBron. I’ll never forget Shaq was like, man, why they was trying to get me out of here? Why they want me to leave? I said, because L.A. Likes pretty people.

They asked Jamie if he would go on Club Shea Shea with Shannon Sharp. Fox said, I don’t want to do no podcast. THR was curious. Why not? Fox says, it seems like you get in trouble.

It seems like if you don’t say something crazy, you can’t move the algorithm. Even with the Cat Williams interview, I love Cat, but there weren’t any follow-up questions. I don’t want to do the podcast because I don’t have to do whatever it is to get the algorithm popping. You got to talk crazy stuff. They were curious.

With Cat, did you call him out for saying your Netflix special wasn’t funny? Jamie said, no, Cat is cool. We’re comics. And if Cat says my special wasn’t funny, that’s better for me because now I got something to talk about. For Comedian, we look for small things of adversity.

When everything is too perfect, you got nothing to talk about. But Cat and I are working together. I got something crazy coming for him. That’s interesting. I’ve always championed comedians, but I see Cat and go, why doesn’t Cat have his own movie, his own vehicle?

It’s time. So it’s right around the corner. Jamie said after the roast of Kevin Hart, quote, I had to cut everything. THR was curious why, Fox said, because people became too sensitive. The roast was whatever you thought it was, but when they take the joke so personally, and it is personal, I didn’t like the George Floyd stuff at all, but when you see people respond to certain things, you go, okay, maybe we need to tuck that away because I want to keep it refreshed.

I don’t want to bend anybody in a pretzel. Take care of yourself on Hulu and Disney Plus today. The never-ending saga of will Jimmy Kimmel stick around took an interesting turn. Disney’s president chief creative officer Dana Walden was asked by Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw if Jimmy Kimmel would still be hosting his ABC late night show next year. Walden said, well, I’m certainly not going to make that announcement with you here today.

Shaw followed up. Why isn’t renewing Kimmel a no brainer given that his ratings are up, etc. Walden said, that’s a good question. And the truth is, it’s a very challenging day part late night. That’s not to say Jimmy isn’t doing a phenomenal job and his ratings are up.

But they’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late night on broadcast television. Obviously, there’s a YouTube channel. Millions of people are watching on-demand parts of the show. That’s not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show. Uh-oh.

I’ve always thought Kimmel’s the face of the network. You’d bring him back. That comment there is a little worrying. Could just be negotiating in public. Maybe Kimmel comes back for less.

A lot of times, In my experience in the entertainment industry, you’ll do a deal where you renew for less, but you also work less. I could see one of those happening. Walden said, we’re trying to make sense of the business while also honoring a deep partnership. I love Jimmy. We have a great friendship.

He’s close to a number of people at Disney. And again, we’re trying to work through it and make sense of both what does Jimmy want What’s the right thing to do and what’s the right thing for our business? Now, I noticed last week when Jimmy Kimmel did his Brooklyn shows, usually that is a big bleep and deal. No buzz this year. Like, you know, other than if you really deep dove on LateNighter.com, I didn’t see any mainstream press about it at all.

Conan O’Brien was at Bloomberg’s Screen Time conference. He says he doesn’t know what the future of comedy and comedy writing for TV will look like, only that it’ll be different than when he started. Conan said the days of writer rooms running from August through May and everybody being paid very handsomely in their 20s and ordering food on a network tab are not coming back. It’ll change, but creative people always find a way to be creative and congregate and make great things. Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman asked Conan if he buys the network line that late night is a bad business, you know, specific to the Colbert and the Byron Allen part of all things.

Conan said, over my 17 years at NBC, I started to see it really changing. They were asking us to be much more cost conscious with good reason. People were watching HBO and Cinemax. Then more networks started doing late night shows. It’s a little like Detroit and automobiles.

Things changed. Conan says he’s a 53% optimist that writers and comedians will find new ways to make funny things and get them in front of viewers. It’s going to keep changing and it’s not going to be what I knew. I’m glad I got to have that, but it will change and morph and really talented people will profit from it. Conan talked about podcasting and how he’s become a victim of his own success.

He explains, so when you start out doing this thing, you’re just going to talk to the artist. It’s very pure. But as the show becomes more successful, appearances begin arriving with requirements attached. An episode needs to drop at a certain time to coincide with a project. Conan said you start to see it calcified because that’s what happens to things.

As for talk shows, I was very fortunate to have that format when the format was the thing to have. And I did it for a long time and I loved it. But now at this stage in my life and my career, having these kinds of conversations with people and not obsessing about what I’m wearing, not having makeup on, it just feels like this is an appropriate place to be. Will Conan keep the podcast past his current contract, which runs through 2027? He said, I haven’t even thought about it yet.

We’ll get to that when the time comes, but I assure you, all will be well. All this reminds me to plug the new podcast, Is Late Night Dead? If you haven’t checked out episode one, that’s in its own feed. The feed is called Is Late Night Dead? I talked about 1230 Letterman last week.

This week on Sunday, I will talk about 1130 Letterman. Is Late Night Dead, wherever you found this show. In the first week of new episodes since late July, Late Night with Seth Meyers. Make 1230 great again. Let’s get somebody else in there.

Average 968,000 total viewers for the week of September 20th, up 44% from the previous week, which was week seven of reruns. Adults 18 to 49, 122,000 people, which are podcast numbers. Yikes. Over on CBS, the Byron Allen 1230 show, Funny You Should Ask, had 451,000 total viewers, up about 9%. So that’s like half of what Seth Meyers is doing without even trying.

At 1135, Jimmy Kimmel Live. Up top, 2.562 million total viewers, 291,000 adults, 18 to 49. Fallon, 1.4 million total viewers, and 186,000 adults, 18 to 49. Yikes, yikes, yikes. Thanks for Late Nighter for pulling those numbers.

Pete Davidson has a cover story in Variety. Pete discussed the peanut gallery, as he calls them. Those are the people who have spent years scolding him for telling the occasional 9-11 joke. Pete said, for a while, it bothered me when I would get a, why is he talking about 9-11 and his dad and all this stuff from weird people on the internet? Like it was all I talked about.

I’ve made maybe five jokes about it. My specials over a span of 16 years.

And then every 9-11, I try and do a benefit to help out.

So I have my blinders on. I do whatever I feel is necessary to do. Pete talked about the president of the United States saying nothing that guy says is surprising anymore. It’s sad that it’s to the point where it’s so ridiculous. You’re like, yeah, whatever.

He’s the drunk uncle, but he’s the keys to the nukes. That’s the problem. If he didn’t have those keys, he’d be like, oh, that’s just the silly drunk uncle. He’s old. Pete discussed how it took him a while to settle into SNL.

He said, I wanted to leave after my first year and asked Lorne Michaels to leave every year. I was like, I don’t work in this.

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And then I just do my standup on update and burn it.

And then I can’t do it on the road. And I just want to do standup. And Lorne would always be like, you’ll figure it out after four years. And he was right. Pete seemed frustrated that people like to talk about his dating activities.

He said, what do I have to do? Look, I get it. I’ve dated a lot of people, but so has everyone else. Everyone is having sex with everyone in this business. Everyone.

And for some reason, it’s zeroed in on me and I can’t feel sorry for myself because I put myself in those situations. But everyone else is doing it. I was in my 20s. Am I supposed to not mess around and do drugs and have fun and be in Hollywood like everyone else? Sorry, everyone.

Charlie Sheen, back doing a sitcom. He’ll team up with his father, Martin Sheen. They will star as father and son. Good casting. It is a comedy series called Happy Jack.

It’ll be on AMC. The multicam comedy starts production on a six-episode first season in L.A. For launch on AMC. It will be shot in front of a live studio audience. The description, Charlie Sheen plays Jack, a bit of a lifelong never-do-well.

He’s got two great daughters, though his dad, played by Martin Sheen, deserves more credit for how they turned out. Kate runs Jack’s company and keeps him on the rails, while Sam.. Is a wild child who’s more like her dad. When Sam comes home to introduce everyone to her new boyfriend, Jack is shocked to learn that Paul, a former investment banker turned van life guru, is the same age as he is. Shocked at first, Jack realizes he’s got a choice to make.

Will he keep looking out for number one or embrace this last chance to be a real part of his daughter’s lives? Were you bored listening to me listen to that sentence? I don’t want to watch that. And I love I love Martin Sheen and I like Charlie Sheen, but I’m bored. No, don’t make that.

And we’ll leave on a sad note today. Reggie McFadden, actor and stand-up comic who got his big break on Deaf Comedy Jam, worked for a season on In Living Color, has died. Reggie McFadden was 57. His sister told The Hollywood Reporter that the U.S. State Department notified the family that Reggie had died in Tanzania, where he’d been living for the past 18 years.

In 1991, Reggie made it onto HBO’s Deaf Comedy Jam, and after moving to L.A. He landed small roles on Martin, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Moesha, and Coach, he’s perhaps best remembered for In Living Color. He appeared in 23 episodes of the fifth and final season in sketches such as Wheel of Dozens, All Up in the Family, and the Dirty Dozens Tournament of Champions. Reggie McFadden was 57.

That’s your comedy news for today.

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Featured: Sebastian Maniscalco, Jamie Foxx, Liz Mealy, Shane Gillis, Jim Gaffigan, Kevin Hart, Brian Regan, George Carlin

What’s in This Episode

• Sebastian Maniscalco Raw Dog channel controversy
• Raw Dog radio station rotation changes and artist roster reduction
• Comedy radio programming strategy and playlist rotation
• Stand Up For Stand Up data analysis on spin counts
• Jamie Foxx new special release
• Comics’ royalties and licensing issues

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hey there, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Little housekeeping. This technically is the bonus episode. Normally, the regular episode comes out at 3 a.m. And if I do a bonus, I do it at noon.

I’m going to flip that today. So if you’re looking for the regular episode, that’ll be out on noon Eastern on Wednesday. This is the bonus episode. Because I want to talk more about Sebastian Maniscalco, Raw Dog Gate. This is a big deal.

I’m going to play some more clips from big-name comedians. Sebastian is just going to have to do something about this. It is currently 3.57 p.m. On Tuesday afternoon as I record this piece here. So part of the stress for me is I can’t be near my computer on Wednesday morning.

I have a commitment that I have to do So that’s why I’ve flipped the episodes, because the regular episode where I tell you about Jamie Foxx’s new special out today, that’ll hold. So you can get that at noon. But I’m a little concerned that if I schedule this and wait too late in the day, Sebastian will have reacted to this and this whole thing will be dated. And I want to be fair to the guy. Now, I think this is a very, very easy win for Sebastian.

All he has to do is go, hey, wow, I heard you guys and didn’t realize. And oh, my goodness, I feel so bad. Yeah, of course we want to play comedians. As the former program director of the Raw Dog channel, as I mentioned yesterday for newer listeners, I was vice president of comedy and entertainment for Sirius XM over a decade ago. So I absolutely have some expertise on this subject for me when I program the channel.

It was a mix of hits and discovery, as we call it. So back in 2008 or so, maybe we were playing a lot of Dean Cook and Jeff Dunham, but we would play people maybe you didn’t know, like a Hannibal Buress, somebody like that, and mix them in. The value proposition was come for the hits and then trust us, we know what’s happening in comedy. I personally don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to play comedians like somebody like Liz Mealy, who’s in the center of this. She’s fantastic.

Why wouldn’t you play Liz Mealy? Why wouldn’t you have a station that plays someone like Liz Mealy or Gianmarco Ceresi or people like that? Why wouldn’t you play these people? I don’t understand it at all. But you would have to ask the current programmers there.

Anyway, there’s a website, standupforstandup.org. They’ve done some research on this. According to that website, total spins per month, barely moved all year. Between 7,800 and 9,400 clips. When I programmed the channel, we tried to aim for like five minute clips.

If you did clips that were too short, it just cluttered up the radio station. And if you had a bit that was like too long, it slowed down the radio station. So we aimed for around five, always trying to keep the integrity of the bit. But as a comedian, if you had an album with a bunch of 90 second tracks, we just didn’t schedule them because of the clutter issue.

Also, if you had an 11 minute bit, like Eddie Murphy, The Barbecue, that just…

I’d have to do the math on if you play a five-minute clip, so that would be 12 an hour, 24 hours a day, 30 days a month. You do the math, you probably wind up with a number around 7,800 to 9,400. Standupforstandup.org says what changed is how many different acts split that number. The active roster shrank by roughly 66% as the channel rebrand took hold from a high of 812 acts in April to 275 in September. Let me talk to you about radio programming really quickly.

I’m going to do this very quickly. If you’re a radio expert, you can poke holes in my argument, but I’m going to teach this very simply the way I teach it to college students for the first time when they’re learning about music rotations. Let’s have Three categories, A, B, and C. A is going to be hits. B is going to be things that were popular, say, six months ago.

C is going to be classics. What we do is we have a smaller pool of comedians or songs in A, a bigger pool in B, and then C is a big slow rotation. So say you did play a George Carlin bit. Well, George hasn’t put anything new out in 15, 20 years now. So Carlin would go in C, think of C as classic, and maybe somebody who’s hot right now, if you had a Shane Gillis clip, you would put Shane in A.

The difference between music radio and comedy radio is in music radio, you don’t mind hearing the same song over and over if you really like the song, especially if it’s new. In comedy, once you hear something, you’ve heard it, and you never laugh the same way as hard the second time. So the analog is basically a comedy library will have 10 times as many songs. So think of a comedy clip as a song. And in terms of licensing, they are effectively songs.

They are sound recordings is the term. You may have heard the term top 40 radio. So maybe in comedy, you might have 400, whereas you had 40. Because you don’t add one song, you usually add a new album. If Shane Gillis put out a new album, I wouldn’t add just track one from Shane Gillis’s album, I would add the entire album.

Does that make sense? In terms of how many artists you were playing? I don’t know if I ever really factored that in. When you use the automatic music scheduler, you do have to have there’s a concept called artist separation. For example, if you just played Shane Gillis, you don’t want to play Shane Gillis again in the next five minutes, 10 minutes, probably not again for a few hours.

So you tell the computer, OK, separate the artist Shane Gillis from itself with I think we had a three hour rule back in the day. But I more looked at the number of total clips available rather than total artists. The current programmers may have a different opinion. Standup for Standup.org say there were 812 playing in April, 275 in September. They say June 2026 saw shift.

That month, nearly half the names on the top 100 list were swapped out and spin shifted towards a much smaller rotation featuring more famous performers receiving heavier rotation. So I’m going to call up their website now. They have a graph there. March 2026-before. And according to this, in March 2026, Jim Jeffries had 90 spins.

Pete Correale, who co-hosts the Sebastian Maniscalco podcast, was number two with 86. Hannah Gadsby with 84 spins. Florentine with 78. Adrienne Appalucci with 74. Liz Mealy with 74.

Mike Vecchione with 73. Chad Daniels with 71. Ian Edwards, 67. And at number 10, Gianmarco Soresi at 64. Now, according to this data, I haven’t checked it.

I have no reason not to believe their data. Of those 10 I just read you, Hannah, Florentine, Adrian, Liz, Mike Vecchione, Ian Edwards, and Gianmarco Soresi are out of current rotation. Chad Daniels, Pete Correale, and Jim Jeffries still in. In September, which is the new format, StandUpForStandUp.org says number one in spins, Jim Gaffigan with 183 spins. Now, I program currently the comedy offerings for the Live One app.

I can assure you, Jim Gaffigan is quite popular, and my audience shows no sense of Jim Gaffigan fatigue, so I don’t think it’s absurd to play a lot of Jim Gaffigan. Number two, Kevin Hart. Same note, 181 spins. Number three, Brian Regan, 175. Corey Elliott, 173 at number four.

Again, Corey Elliott is the co-host of the Sebastian podcast. Number five, Cat Williams. Mark Normand at number six with 171. Jimmy Carr, then Dan Soder. Gary Goleman, and Jamie Foxx, interestingly enough.

That surprises me. Jamie doesn’t have all that much comedy, and I say that. I know he has a new special out today, and he recently did a comedy special, but I used to program the Foxhole comedy station for Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx does not have a lot of recorded comedy, so I don’t know how they’re getting up to 164 spins for Jamie Foxx, but okay. If you’re curious, the next five names are Gervais, Bo Burnham, Chris Rock, Louis C.K.

Martin Lawrence. In terms of play the hits, and in all formats, you should play the hits. Again, Gaffigan, Kevin Hart, Regan, Correale, Cat, Mark Norman, Jimmy Carr, Soder, Goldman, Jamie Foxx, Gervais, Burnham, Chris Rock, Louis C.K. Martin Lawrence. Not absurd for the category of, say, A for hits.

What’s missing here is the depth. In my opinion, when I had the radio station, I wanted it to be interesting, and I think it’s more interesting.. Sure, let’s play some Kevin Hart, but let’s also play some Liz Mealy, or let’s also play some, I’m just looking at what they used to play, let’s play some David Drake, let’s play some Nicole Birch, let’s play some Nick Callis. Vulture wrote about this. They say, on October 5th, comedians like Pat Noswalt, Michelle Wolfe, Matthew Broussard, dozens of others, we’ll hear from some in a second, took to social media, et cetera, well covered here.

According to these videos, royalties earned from radio play on raw comedy, and again, I brought this up yesterday, It’s interesting to me that everyone is referring to this thing as raw dog, not raw comedy. When I programmed it, it was called Raw Dog Comedy Uncensored. In my last month or so there, the bosses made me change it to Raw Dog Comedy Hits. In my opinion, that was a mistake. Apparently, after I stopped paying attention, they went back to playing more depth and not just doing the hits.

So I think they saw the error of their ways. But now they’ve gone back to doing a hits format with Sebastian. You’d have to ask them. Vulture says royalties earned from radio play on raw comedy approximately $ 15 per spin. Have been a vital source of income for middle-class comedians for a year.

In my experience, when we first started, if we played a comedian, like the first six months, all we heard was, you’re stealing my material!

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And then they found out about the royalties part of it.

We weren’t stealing your material. You had entered them into SoundExchange, and we were using the SoundExchange system to play the material that you had submitted to SoundExchange, or your people had, and now you’re getting royalties. I had one comedian, you’ve heard of this person! You definitely have heard of this person. Thank me personally, because he had gotten a check for $ 80, 000.

This was a big-name comedian. He was very nice to me. Stand Up for Stand Up says the active roster of comedians platformed on the channel has shrunk by roughly 66%, from a high of 812 acts in April to 275 in September. 75% of the plays are concentrated among the top 50 of those artists. Many of whom are famous. We just covered the list.

How are we doing on time? Okay, we’re getting a little long. Let me take the break and I’ll come back and I’ll play a bunch of clips for you.

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All right, let’s hear from a bunch of comedians.

I’m going to play a bunch of comedians reacting to this. You’ve heard of these people in a row. I’m going to play Mark Maron, Dean Cook, Mark Normand, Dan Soder, Brian Posehn, and Todd Barry. I’m just going to play all of those back to back to back. Now, unlike yesterday’s episode, for this, I’ve had to make..

They’re not edits. Just yesterday, I was playing clips that I pulled from threads. Today is a clips I pulled from Instagram, and because of the way I have to capture them, I may have had to clip the beginning of the audio. It’s just a long, boring story, but the audio ripper I use.. You have to actually click on an Instagram video, but if you do that, it stops the audio ripper.

So just trust me, nothing nefarious here, but I’m just being transparent. I may have resized their video and I may have clipped a little bit of the audio, but the spirit of what they say is intact here. So here’s Marin, Dean Cook, Mark Norman, Dan Soder, Brian Posehn, and Todd Berry. So listen, there’s a few ways that comics can make money. They can be on a TV show, they can tour, they can host things, but One of the most steady income streams for a comedian, if they have recorded material, is on Sirius XM’s Raw Dog.

And I make a little cash from that. A lot of comics. Hundreds of people make residuals from being played on satellite radio on Sirius on the Raw Dog station. Sebastian Maniscalco has taken over that station. And apparently a lot of people are losing their airtime, which means they’re losing a lot of income that they need.

As working class comics. So this is sort of a plea and a request for Sebastian to make room and give all those comics their airtime back. Talking today about the situation with Raw, the comedy channel, formerly Raw Dog, which then became the Sebastian Maniscalco channel on SiriusXM. Okay, long story short, there’s a lot of comedians that really depend on not only the revenue stream that’s generated during, let’s call it the lean years or time when maybe you’re taking care of family, taking care of responsibilities. And for one reason or another, that’s like passive income that makes things less passive when you’re off the road and looking to make ends meet.

So listen, Sebastian, we’re coming for you. There’s no way to say it other than We’re all here, and we’re coming to your house right now. Fix it. No. I love Sebastian.

He’s a good friend of mine, and I love SiriusXM, and I think they’re going to do the right thing, which is revert the channel back to what it was. You can still find space for Maniscalco and all things Maniscalco, or maybe there is a way to actually sort of help each other. Sebastian, I’m sure you could spotlight a lot of people, and those comics will then Always appreciate that you. Looked out for them. So that’s what I’m on here to just express.

And I acknowledge that this is something that’s good for all stand-ups. And it’s absolutely mission critical for the health and wellness of so many comics that take the roll of dice and take the gamble in this career and realize that sometimes that sacrifice is going to come You know, with an ebb and a flow that’s not easy to always jive with. So do what’s right. Please, please, please. If you’re listening, Sirius XM, please do the right thing.

And I know Sebastian’s a good dude and he’s going to do the right thing regardless. One other thing while I have you. The Coconut Grove Improv still owes me a bonus Sunday night show that I added back in 2008. And I’m not going to lie to you. I’m pissed.

So can somebody, I know it’s defunct and it no longer exists, but if somebody could get back in touch with me from the improv chain, maybe we could work that out. And you know what? I’ll even break off a third for the 800 comedians that are relying on the raw channel residuals. All right. I’m going to bed.

Make this right. When I wake up, I want everybody to be happy. Please. Sirius XM. Remember old Sirius?

Lord knows I don’t. Well, they’re still around, and they used to have a great channel called Raw Dog, and now that’s been given to Sebastian, and, uh, so they had like 800 comedians on there that they would spin, and, you know, they were famous, not famous, little everything, and now it’s down to 300 famous comics, and I’m talking famous, like Joan, huh, Norm, hey, you know, I like all these guys. George Carlin. Great, great. All great comics, but they’re dead.

They’re all dead. So where’s that money going? I think it’s a way for Sirius to not cough up the dough. Pretty good. So let’s get Raw Dog back.

I don’t know if Sebastian had anything to do with it or whatever. If he knew he was screwing over a bunch of people, I doubt it. But why not get him back? That’s a great way for you to find out about a new comic, learn about a guy or a gal you like, and you’re on a road trip, and you go, this is great, I’ve got to look this person up. So, yeah.

These guys have had it too good for too long, these dead comics. So, let’s get Raw Dog back, and please make fun of my hair in the comments. Thank you. Comedy. What it is, is it’s comics coming together to talk about SiriusXM’s Raw Dog Radio.

Raw Dog Radio was a very important.. Source of income for a lot of comics. It played over 800 comics and it’s comics, you know, comics you love, but more importantly, comics you’ve never heard of, or maybe comics that you’ve never ran across and it would play their jokes and it would pay them. So it helped a lot of people make rent and made a lot of people help with like, you know, food and that kind of stuff. And recently Sebastian Maniscalco, one of the greats, one of the top working comics took over the channel.

And since they took it over, they stopped playing a lot of comics. They started playing very famous comics. If you’ve ever been to a comedy club and looked at the menu, it’s probably a comic that they have a drink named after, you know, it’s probably like the Joan Rivers martini or the Bernie Mac and cheese. It’s just people like that. It’s like very famous comics who are dead or who don’t necessarily need the money.

So this video is just asking Sebastian, to please reconsider and return Raw Dog Radio to what it was, which was a great source of income for the comedy community. Not just one individual comedian, but all the comedians. So Sebastian, if you see this, we love you, dude. You know, I’ve met you. You’re a sweetheart of a guy, an awesome comic.

Please just reconsider and start booking the channel the way it was. You know, help out a lot of comedians. Because you don’t want.. You don’t want to look greedy. You don’t want to look like you’re not helping out comics.

And more importantly, you got a lot of catchphrases that can be used against you. And I don’t think, you know, you don’t want to see a bunch of, why did you, aren’t you embarrassed? You took away their rent money. I’m just saying Sebastian, one comic to another, please reconsider having raw dog radio, uh, restored to the way it was to help out the community. Um, And I promise you this is the last front-facing video you’ll see from me for a while.

Hopefully. Along with my brothers and sisters in stand-up comedy, I, too, support all of them that are fighting against this latest thing to happen to work in comics. You know, it’s been a rough couple of years for people.. That just make money off stand-up and their live dates and people that don’t have support of these massive streaming stations and whatever. There’s a lot of people that feed families and cats and dogs and themselves just off what they make performing around the country.

And a lot of them were living off this extra money from streaming services and, you know, having jokes get on Sirius. And that helped them, you know, by having they got money from that, which they should. But then they also got people to find out about them and hear them and go, oh, I heard that dude on Raw Dog. I’m going to go see him or I’m going to buy his record or, you know, go to a record store, which I still do, and buy a comedy record. That happens.

And now it won’t. So not only do those people not get any money from Raw Dog because of Sebastian Maniscalco, which God bless him. He’s been working, you know, I don’t know if he’s been doing it as long as I have. I’ve been doing it almost 40 years, but I know he’s been in the trenches for a long time and he should have respect for all the other people that do the same thing that he did for so long and don’t have the success that he has yet, you know? And, uh, Sirius XM, you know, I pay, I subscribe cause I love the metal stations and I love, don’t worry about what other stations I listened to.

But anyway, um, I support Sirius XM and, and I’ve also enjoyed getting money from, um, my stuff being played on there and it’s not going to be played on raw dog anymore. And luckily I have other, uh, forms of income, but a lot of comics don’t. And, uh, this situation sucks. So I hope somebody, Sebastian or Sirius, I hope you change your mind and, uh, How about this? How about a show called Sebastian Presents Up and Comers?

Do like what Tiffany Haddish does and what other people do where they support other comics and use their name to do that. Positive. That’s something cool to do. Instead of just making more money and then making it so no one else makes money. That’s not positive.

That’s something else. Hey, it’s Todd Barry. I’m wearing a black shirt. So you know it’s about to get serious. Serious?

I didn’t even mean to make that little coincidental homonym thing. I was asked to make a video about the whole Sebastian Maniscalco thing. Comics were asked to do that, and they were supposed to do it at noon today. It’s 7 p.m. Now, so I’m guessing Sebastian’s got the message.

And I’m sure people who’ve been scrolling videos all day have gotten the message. So you know the bullet points of what’s going on with this situation. And I just hope it gets resolved because these comedians, I saw a post from a comedian I know, and she said like a third of her income comes from royalties. So that’s a lot of money. And not everyone is as fortunate as me who plays opera houses exclusively and stadiums.

And the occasional half-full rock club. Or the occasional quarter-filled rock club. Or the occasional canceled show because no one bought a ticket. Now, that doesn’t happen in a while. Anyway, I’m aware that I have a nose hair situation, but I literally..

I just went around the corner to my bathroom. I don’t know why I need to tell you where my bathroom is. And I clipped them, then I clipped them again, and I still see them. Anyway. Sebastian, I’ve never actually met you.

I saw you in Montreal years ago, and I watched your set, and you’re excellent. And when you walked off, I said, that was great. You gave me a thank you. So that’s the extent of our relationship. But I think I’ve heard you’re a great guy, and I hope that this gets resolved and people can start making some money again.

But to reiterate, I play opera houses and stadiums exclusively. And I am for the theaters. Is that how you say that? All right. Good night, everyone.

As I voice this section, it is 4.11 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, October 6th. I’m on website XM Playlist, and I have selected Sebastian’s channel. The most recent bit they played was by Pete Correale. Before that, Martin Lawrence, Neil Brennan, Craig Ferguson, Nikki Glaser.

Then the Sebastian Maniscalco show was on. Somebody brought up to me that they’ve renamed that, that it used to be called Pete and Sebastian, the Pete being Pete Correale.

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And now it’s the Sebastian Maniscalco show with Pete Correale.

I wonder how the gator feels about that one. I will have to ask him what next time I see him. Paul Verzi was played at 2.53 p.m. Nate Bregazzi, Mark Ellis, Bernie Mac, Yakov Smirnoff, Seinfeld, Joe Coy, Jamie Foxx, what appears to be a clip from Sebastian’s show, Big J, and Bob Hope. Now, believe me, I’m a huge Bob Hope fan.

I programmed the Radio Classics channel in two different stints for Sirius and then SiriusXM. I did pop-up stations with the Bob Hope estate. I had lovely conversations with Linda Hope. Somewhere in the archives is me talking with Linda Hope about Bob Hope. I’m a big Bob Hope fan.

I have no idea as a programmer why someone thought At 2.21 p.m. Today, they should play Bob Hope’s Alaskan Christmas Pit Stop. Two cuts after playing Andrew Schultz. I’m not sure what the crossover between Andrew Schultz fans and Bob Hope fans are, but you would have to ask Sebastian Maniscalco and the current programming team at SiriusXM. And that is your bonus episode on a Wednesday morning, again at noon Eastern, the regularly scheduled episode.

And if any of this has changed, I come in peace. I mean well. I have to take my father-in-law to the doctor this morning. I’m driving a car and I can’t record a podcast or edit a podcast or do research while driving a car. So I’ll be around this afternoon and if Sebastian has moved on this, I will deal with it then.

Thanks.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Featured: Bert Kreischer, Rob Lowe, Tom Segura, Tom Cruise, Seth Meyers, Will Arnett, Dane Cook, Nikki Glaser, David Spade, Whitney Cummings, Taylor Swift

What’s in This Episode

• Bert Kreischer reveals Tom Cruise’s daily routine secrets on Two Bears One Cave podcast
• Seth Meyers expresses desire to continue hosting Late Night past 2028 contract
• Johnny Mac’s campaign to replace Seth Meyers with a more entertaining host at 12:30
• Johnny Mac launches new sister podcast ‘Is Late Night Dead?’ examining late night history
• Dane Cook discusses brother’s theft, SNL audition regret, and documentary in Deadline interview
• Nikki Glaser and David Spade bringing comedy residency to Caesars Palace Coliseum in Las Vegas
• Whitney Cummings defends Taylor Swift

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Burt Kreischer claims to have the secrets of Tom Cruise. Burt was on the Two Bears, One Cave podcast. Rob Lowe was sitting in for Tom Segura that day. That’s a pretty good upgrade, actually.

And the topic turned to Tom Cruise. Burt said his life is fascinating. I can’t say how I know this, but he has everything planned out to a T. He has a person who trims down F1 and soccer so that in the gym, they’ve cut out all the commercials and all the highlights so we can go, oh, this race is great. And he sees the best race that he’s ever seen.

And then Tom Cruise works out.

And then as Tom Cruise works out, they’re like, TC is coming to D.

Yeah, get his food ready. And he walks into the room, food’s ready, and the shower is already steaming. Like, everything’s planned out. I find that pretty fascinating about Tom Cruise. Then they got into some of Tom Cruise’s belief system.

Burt said, That doesn’t bother me. Whatever you find solace in. Burt did not share how he has this inside information about someone steaming the shower for Tom Cruise. This is just terrible news. Seth Meyers wants to keep posting late night past 2028.

Now, unfortunately.. He’s contracted to host the show. That doesn’t mean NBC couldn’t buy him out. Make 1230 great again. But Seth wants to keep doing that show to the 90,000 or so people between 18 and 49 that watch it every night.

Seth Meyers was asked by Will Arnett where he sees himself, Seth Meyers, five years from now. Seth Meyers said, I would love to say in five years from now. I’m still doing Late Night. I’m not tired of it at all. I really, really enjoy it.

Late-nighter did the math and points out five years would take Seth Meyers past the end of his current contract, which he signed in 2024, and keeps him behind the late-night desk through the end of the 2027-2028 season. Seth said, I think what I’ve done at late night will be the stuff that will help me figure out a great many things, and ultimately the problem or fear I had leaving SNL was like, oh, I’m so worried my next job’s going to be boring, and this one isn’t. Yeah. You sure? You sure?

It’s not boring. Maybe it’s not boring to Seth. He says he has no plan B, but I say to you, people of America, let’s make 1230 great again in the tradition of late night with David Letterman and late night with Conan O’Brien. Forget about the Fallon years. Don’t bring that up, John.

In the tradition of those two great shows, let’s make 1230 great again. We need a host who can bring the wacky and bring the fun, and we are not getting that at 1230. Seth Meyers, let him do a show on, like, I don’t know, let him do a show on Peacock. That’ll be fine. The Peacock show with Seth Meyers, you guys can watch that.

He can do day drinking and closer look and all that nonsense. I want Chris Fleming on there being weird and wacky. Make 1230 great again.

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Speaking of late nights, have you checked out my new sister series, Is Late N…

That is a new audio podcast. Last week, we took a look at 1230 Letterman. This week on Sunday, we’ll take a look at 1130 Letterman. Not as great as 1230 Letterman. We’ll get into that on this week’s show.

Is Late Night Dead? Wherever you found this podcast, you’ll find that podcast. Please hit the follow button. Probably not going to be an episode about Seth Meyers. Don’t worry about it.

Dane Cook caught up with Deadline. You know, Dane’s got the whole thing with his brother and the documentary and all that. Deadline was curious. Hey, Dean Cook, have you talked through any of this on stage? As a comic, it must have been important to learn to laugh at the situation, huh?

Dean Cook said, one of the first things I said on stage about it was, some of you guys might have heard that my brother stole this money from me. He was a corrections officer at a maximum security prison before I asked him to quit and come work with me and for me at my company. You know, I hired him to protect my money, not help but escape. Dean obviously told it better. Dane said, That was the first time I joked about it, and I got a pleasant laugh.

Maybe he didn’t tell it better. But it was really more about me going, This is a scarlet letter on me, and I have to start sharing this. The first times I talked about it publicly was probably 2014, 15. I only did it for a little bit. Then I pulled back because I thought, I don’t think people really know the story or understand it, to even laugh at it.

I also didn’t think I was ready to find the humor in it publicly, even though Courtney and myself and my friends, I was able to find humor and entertainment in other ways. Deadline switched topics. I thought this was interesting. The question, in terms of your career, Dane Cook, it was interesting to hear that you psyched yourself out of an audition at SNL. Do you regret that?

Dane said, no way. At the time, sure. They were really fighting. They were bringing me in personally. SNL producers, they were teeing me up potentially for it.

Would I have gotten it? I don’t know. There were other incredible people going in that day, but everything behind the scenes was like, Dane’s perfect. This kid’s perfect. And when I said no that day at Rock Plaza..

I know the bench I was sitting on. I walked by it many times since. Sitting there with tears coming out from underneath my Ray-Bans. Did I regret it? A couple years later, I remember being out on the road somewhere and being like, oh no, what did I do?

But I was stressed in my gut. I just knew it was going to be okay. That there was something else that I can’t see yet, but I’m working towards. So when Lorne Michaels called me all those years later and said, we want your fans watching on the show, I was like, now I get both. I get to do my dream, but I’m the producer of my own career.

I get to be my own Lorne Michaels. I get to break bread with one of my heroes and a friend, Lorne Michaels, and do the show. They asked Deadline to look back on the rise of his comedy career. Dane said, I’m filled with pride, with deep, deep gratitude that I got to show, in particular my mom, that the kid that was last picked is going to entertain the world. She used to say, I think you can entertain the whole world, Dane.

And I believed her. It’s the 10,000 hours I put on the road somewhere.

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And then all these people come in and help you fortify your dreams.

When I look back at that era, the only thing where I have a little bit of pang is the momentum of what I thought my career was and should be at the time. I felt like I flipped. I careened off the side of the road and I was so disheartened by that because I love what I do and I wanted it to expand. That was off track for a few years. And I’d like to believe that when people see this, the documentary, it’s just remembering I’m a guy that likes to deliver.

I always want to bring a good idea or a better idea to the table. And by the way, if you have a good or better idea than my idea, then we do that. I’m a workhorse and I love it. I love to collaborate and I’m ready to reset in terms of how you think I am. Whatever preconceived notion, the Dane train, as we lovingly call it, when you probably first discovered my MySpace.

I just want to be back in motion and continuing to make things and entertain my friends around the world. Nikki Glaser and David Spade have Good BR People, the headline, they’re bringing their comedy residency back to Las Vegas. Now, to me, a residency is like when you do like a lot of shows at one location, like you’re U2 and you set up at the Sphere and you do like 40 shows together. Well, the Nikki Glaser David Spade residency at the Caesars Palace Coliseum has a total of four dates, January 22nd and 23rd, and then April 16th and 17th. So the residency is two weekends, four months apart.

That’s not a residency, but well done, PR people. Whitney Cummings is sticking up for Taylor Swift. Now.. When I think of Taylor Swift, I don’t know about you, I always think about that time Jo Koy told this just horrible, mean joke about her. Do you remember when that happened?

Here, let me remind you. As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL, on the Golden Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. Anyway, recently, Taylor Swift released The Life of a Showgirl, the encore, adding four new tracks to her not very good 2025 album. And the fans are killing Taylor Swift over them.

They hate them, especially the song Cleveland. Whitney Cummings took to social media and defended Cleveland. Whitney said, we know what she’s capable of. Why not let her do a lighthearted ditty? Cummings said she enjoyed listening to Cleveland and not worrying that she has internal bleeding from a broken heart.

Whitney said, maybe Taylor just wanted to give us a song where we didn’t have to study the periodic table and completely memorize pi in order to unlink the map. She is confident Taylor Swift will come up with another, you know, Mensa bop. Is Futurama dead? It’s never dead. It wrapped up season 14 on Hulu.

There are no plans for it to return as a regular series. However, not dead yet. There are three supersized Hulu specials still to come. Matt Groening told Variety they could put us in a coffin. They can nail the lid shut, but they can’t bury us.

We will rise again. I guess I’m not too worried. You see, Futurama first premiered on Fox in 1999 and ended on Fox in 2003. Then Comedy Central brought it back in 2008, and that wrapped in 2013. Then, ten years later, it came back on Hulu in 2023.

Each time it looked like the series was ending, the producers prepared an episode that could double as a series finale, only for the show to come back. That’s why the producers had fun with this year’s finale. The season 14 ender was given the title, Final Ending, The Last Conclusion. Spoiler, Fry and his brother sneak into a PG-13 movie as kids with shocking consequences for the future. Groening said, I think we have a whistling past the graveyard attitude these days because we’ve been in this situation many times before.

We have lots more stories to tell. The animators and the actors and the writers would all love to do more stories. We’ll see. You never know. However, there are the three specials dubbed XXXL-sized announced at Comic-Con.

They’re currently in production. They’ll be out in 2027 with a Christmas-related installment. So I guess we’ve got to wait about a year, unless you’re going to put out a Christmas episode in February. Groening said, the people at Hulu Disney were saying, hey, give us some big stories that we can promote. And we said, gotcha.

So these three that are coming up are kind of epic stories and they’re promotable. The nature of these stories in general for Futurama and also The Simpsons is that each episode could be a movie. I mean, we pack enough melodrama and shenanigans in every episode to stretch it out. It’s just fun to tell a bigger story, but also to take the time to breathe a little bit. As for the Christmas episode, spoilers, Robot Santa will return.

Matt said, our version of Christmas, of course, is with Robot Santa. Which back in the day was very controversial because our robot Santa thought he was Santa, but he thought everyone was naughty, so he would go around trying to kill everyone. That was not considered in the Christmas spirit. At first, there was some talk about not running the shows. It was very controversial, but now everyone’s figured it out.

It’s all in good fun. Ya think? Now, what if Futurama doesn’t come back, Matt said? If it doesn’t happen, we’ll do something else. Love it.

A kerfuffle over at the Celebrity Traders UK, the newspaper, The Sun. I always like to say the newspaper, The Sun, unless you think like a star that the planet orbits is putting out news. No, this is a newspaper, The Sun. Reported that James Acaster became so distressed during filming of Celebrity Traders UK that his fellow contestants and production staff intervened to halt recording. A source revealed to The Sun, which is a newspaper, the show is incredibly intense, and during one particular scene at the castle, James Acaster became very anxious and panicked.

Some of the other celebrities on the show spoke up and said cameras should stop rolling so he can calm down. Production agreed. Everyone looks out for each other. A spokesperson for the Celebrity Traitors UK said, The Traitors is a unique and immersive game, and we recognize that taking part can be intense at times. Now our highest priority is always the safety and welfare of everyone taking part, etc, etc.

A caster was asked why he signed up for Celebrity Traders. He said, I just love it. I’m a huge fan. I’ve been watching since series one. I instantly got addicted to it when I started watching.

I think I started watching it halfway through the first series. I was catching up on iPlayer. I did all of it in one night and I got really frustrated. I had to wait for other episodes. And that is your comedy news for today.

Catch you tomorrow.

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Featured: Jim Norton, Dave Chappelle, Bill Burr, Amy Poehler, Mike Schur, Hugh Laurie, Taylor Tomlinson, Joe Coy

What’s in This Episode

• Jim Norton defends Dave Chappelle on Fox News
• Bill Burr criticizes mainstream journalism and media division
• Bill Burr discusses AI replacing workers instead of executives
• Amy Poehler’s new comedy-mystery series ‘Dig’ with Mike Schur
• Taylor Tomlinson discusses health struggles and leaving Late Night with Seth Meyers

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Jim Norton spoke with Fox News. The topic, Dave Chappelle. But somebody needs to tell Craig Carton that he’s off mic. Put the mic in front of you, dude.

I love Chappelle, man. Whether I agree or disagree with a point is meaningless. I love it. He’s just telling a story now as opposed to here’s a punchline. Yeah, and people who don’t like him, like people who are like trans advocates or whatever who think he’s wrong, like he’s doing exactly what a comic should do.

He’s up there, he’s being funny, and he’s giving his real thoughts. That’s the end of it. That’s all a comedian’s obligated to do. You’re giving your real thoughts. You don’t like what Chappelle says?

Go up and give a better thought. Or don’t watch him. Or don’t watch him. That’s it. You have two options.

But comics criticizing like he has some obligation to toe an ideological line is so crazy. Rolling Stone recently had that big cover story with Bill Burr. Here’s Bill Burr talking about journalism in the 21st century. Journalism was all bought up, essentially. There’s no journalists, I don’t feel, really, in the mainstream, like that hard-hitting, all-the-presidents-men thing.

Stuff, they got rid of it and for the exact purpose of what it was doing. So now I just feel like they, you know, you got these talking heads on 24 hour news networks and they’re just designed to make us hate each other. And I feel like the way you’ve watched our country destabilize all these other countries, I feel like that’s what they’re doing. I mean, just touring is a comic. How much I’ve seen it change.

Like it used to be like we hated the Russians, you know, now, now it’s like, like Texas hates California. California hates Texas. These people hate Florida. Somebody hates New York. It’s like, guys, same teams.

We’re on the same teams here. Like, how would this help you? Bill Burr also had some thoughts about AI. I was talking, you know, all this AI is to, like, replace working people. It’s like, why don’t you make an AI CEO that’s empathetic, that cares about the middle class and the future of the planet?

They’re making way more. You take that guy’s salary versus all the work. You’re going to save way more money replacing one guy. Why don’t you do that? Because it’s not for us.

It’s for them. Amy Poehler is hawking her new show. It is called Dig. And Amy said, if I could describe Dig using three words, I would say funny, friendship, and dirty. But not like dirty, dirty.

She means like actual dirt getting on you because they’re archaeologists and they dig. Do you get it? Yeah, that. She has teamed up with Mike Schur for the first time since Parks and Rec. The 10-episode adaptation of Dig is from Kate Meyer’s 2023 bestseller Excavations, which follows a team of four female archaeologists who spend their summer working on dig site in Greece.

The series was filmed in Greece. Nice work if you can get it. That’s a Sandler move. And L.A. Less exciting, the women discover a rare artifact that could change history as they know it.

The relic is tied to an international conspiracy, and the archaeologists end up on the adventure of a lifetime. You know, that doesn’t sound terrible, and I’m a bit of a hater sometimes, I admit it. That sounds kind of interesting. Amy Poehler plays the project’s lead, the brilliant loner Elise. She’s joined by Dylan, who returns to Greece after five years to take care of some unfinished business.

There’s also some other characters, including the undergrad assistant to British professor Neville. Neville is played by Hugh Laurie. Nice cast. Amy Poehler said, I think a good comedy creates characters that make you care enough to wonder what they do on the weekend when you’re not watching them. What’s cool about Mike’s work is there’s not a reluctance to find the deep humanity in his characters and you can feel it.

Maybe Mike Schur should work with Adam Sandler, because his character’s not very deep, except when he’s a dramatic actor. As you know, he’s a great dramatic actor. Did you see Jay Kelly? Jay Kelly’s pretty good. Amy Poehler said, it’s about the kind of crazy stuff that happens during one of these archaeological digs.

You know, a dig is a really funny place where a lot of young, energetic people show up to try to find things, and where some serious and professional archaeologists try to make their careers.

And then sometimes a billionaire comes by and asks you to bring the dinosaurs…

Don’t do that. Nature finds a way. Amy said it’s part summer camp, part mysterious undercovering of relics. We thought it’d be a really good place to make jokes and create characters that you like. Or maybe dig.

Dig. Peacock. Monday, November 23rd. It’s probably a good football game that night. I don’t know if you guys planned that out.

They don’t care. Taylor Tomlinson’s out pushing her book. She said last year was really tough for me. Really tough. But I was so grateful that I had the book to work on because if I took that much time off and didn’t have a special to edit and a book to write, I would have gone absolutely crazy.

You could have hosted a late night show. Don’t go there, John. Okay. It was also interesting to be home for that amount of time and realize, oh, I’ve been running on adrenaline for a really long time, and now I’m actually going to go see doctors, as they talk about in the book, but to get really sick in my early 30s and not know what was going on, and I was not aware of this at the time, but I became aware of it after a lot of therapy, was that my mom got sick when she was 32. She went to the doctor, and they said, it’s hormones.

You’re fine. By the time they figured out it was cancer, it was too late, and maybe if someone had listened to her. So then I have that in my brain. I’m listening to all these doctors, and they’re going, well, mono takes a long time, or it might be long COVID. Or it’s an autoimmune thing.

All these answers I’m getting and there’s something in the back of your head going, no, this is what’s going to kill me. I’m right where my mom was in her early 30s and here it is. So I was scared to keep pushing and make my health deteriorate further. And I was also scared to stop pushing and have to face all that. She talked about the 1230 show.

When I quit, I wasn’t supposed to say that I wanted someone else to replace me. I thought that was sort of confusing, but I said, OK, because I didn’t want to do anything wrong.

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And now I feel comfortable saying it.

But part of me was like, maybe I don’t even want to talk about this in the book. She was asked if she regrets taking the 1230 job. She said, I’m so happy I took the job, but also a different person took that job. I’m a completely different person after being that sick for that long and something I’m still kind of dealing with. When I see pictures, videos, whatever, me getting the job, I’m like, I don’t even know who that is.

It wasn’t like I was sick and I took the job and went, I’ll get better. I took the job and then my body crashed and I thought it would get better and it didn’t. So it depends on the day. There are certain days that I think, oh, you shouldn’t have even taken that job. And I don’t think I would have if I were that sick if they had offered it to me a month later.

I would have said, no, I can’t rely on my immune system. Anytime I feel healthy now, I think, you could have done another season. You could have pushed through. So it really depends on the day, and it’s hard not to dwell and beat yourself up. But you have to go.

I did what I did, and I was in survival mode, and I tried my best to handle it as gracefully as possible. But I also know I made mistakes. The LA Times asked Joe Coy, hey, Joe Coy, at this point in your career, they didn’t say it like that. I don’t know why. Hey, Chokoi, at this point in your career, how’s your decision-making about which opportunities to go for changed since the beginning of your career?

How do you know when to say no or what to say no to? Joe Coy, who’s a nice guy, except, you know, that one time he went after Taylor Swift. Do you remember that? He was hosting the Golden Globes. And he just told this horrible, horrible, mean joke about Taylor Swift.

Here, let me play it for you. As you know, we came on after a football doubleheader. The big difference between the Golden Globes and the NFL, on the Golden. Globes, we have fewer camera shots of Taylor Swift. Joe Coy said, I think now I’m at that age where I’ve seen it all.

I’ve seen every audience that I could possibly see. And when you hit something like SoFi Stadium, you tend to get to that point where you’re like, man, this is my Super Bowl. It’s kind of like a football player. You know, it all started off of playing catch with his friends in the backyard to dreaming about playing the Super Bowl.

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And then you play the Super Bowl.

And that was the pinnacle. And I loved it. Now I’m in auto drive and it’s the best part of the DVD, which is the bonus features. And that’s what this is right now. I love this attitude.

Jokoi is pretty cool, except for that one time. But we already played the joke. I get to just live through my bonus features now because everything I dreamt about when I was a kid happened. Now I’m just creating things for fun. He was asked about traveling.

He said, It’s kind of like my adrenaline, my excitement that gets me going. I think at the beginning of the week, I always go, oh, man, I got to go to Tacoma. But the minute I land in Tacoma, the excitement builds. It’s like I’m counting down the minutes to get on stage. It just motivates me.

So it’s this passion. I can’t explain it. I feel you. I recently went to Los Angeles, and I was like, if I go, I’m going to be tired. And I was driving home, true story, and the Kenny Chesney song..

Was it Live a Little? The point of the Kenny Chesney song is there’s only so much lightning in the bottle. There’s only so many times you get to feel like this. And I felt like Kenny Chesney was speaking to me through the radio. And he said, go to L.A.

You can sleep on the plane. So you’re tired for two days. Live your life. Thank you, Kenny Chesney. So I went to Los Angeles and Joe Coy and I are kindred spirits because he says the beginning of the week I was go, oh, man, I got to go to Tacoma.

Then the minute I land. It’s the excitement builds. It’s like I’m counting down the minutes to get on stage and it motivates me. Josh Johnson spoke to Nashville Scene about what he likes in Nashville. He said, I really like going to the Great Escape.

It reminds me of when I was growing up and you had these catch-all stores that had every type of novelty for them to have comic books, vinyl, cassettes, books, everything else. I’m a huge fan of that place. I’ve been there. It is a cool place. Josh says, Nashville’s great because there are plenty of places you go where there’s a little bit of, I’m used to a lot of entertainment, impress me energy.

New York can be like that sometimes. Sometimes. Nashville has a more earnestness to it people are out there to see a show it’s a little less impressed me and more giving people a more than fair shot of what they’ve got josh johnson was asked are there any nashville comedians people should have their radar on he said dusty meaning dusty slay is probably number one amber autry is great and i’m trying to think of some more but whenever you get asked a question all the names disappear i was seriously at the podcast conference and they asked me what did they ask me um What do I think is overrated in podcasting right now? And I totally froze. I couldn’t think of anything.

Have you read my sub stack? I throw fastballs every Wednesday calling out half the industry. But there on camera, I was like, um, or I don’t know. Anyway, Josh Johnson said Nashville is becoming a bigger and bigger comedy place, mostly thanks to controversial mega comedian April Gatsby, by the way, I’ll add. There’s a huge amount of comedy coming out of Nashville and there’s a nice community there.

He was then asked some rapid-fire questions I’ll answer as well. Question number one, Nashville hot chicken, yes or absolutely not? Me, yes, absolutely. JJ, yes. The stomach ends up saying absolutely not, but the heart, the soul, and the mouth are all in alignment that this is happening.

And then he was asked about Broadway. Fun night out, a personal nightmare? For me, fun night out. Legends Corner. One time with my mom, we went there at 6.30.

So if you ever go to Legends Corner.. They have bands, and the bands switch maybe every hour or so, and each band as the night goes on is better than the band before, and they’re all good. And I sat there with my mom, who was probably like 75 at the time, and we had it at the corner of the bar, and she wanted to see Nashville, and she was enjoying the music, and finally at 11.30, I had had eight Guinnesses And I said to my mom, do you want to see Nashville? She was so happy sitting there watching the bands. And I couldn’t drink anymore, man.

That’s a lot for me, especially. Josh Johnson, Broadway, fun night out, a personal nightmare? He said, fun night out. Don’t forget to check out that new podcast I started. It’s called Is Late Night Dead?

Eventually, I will answer the question, Is Late Night Dead? In the meantime, I will wax poetically about late night shows, episode one, David Letterman, episode two.

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Also, David Letterman, Is Late Night Dead?

Wherever you found this podcast, you’ll find that podcast. Go look for it. I will eventually share those episodes in these feeds as bonus episodes. But for now, Is Late Night Dead? Is its own show.

On Gossip Corner, Russell Peters is selling his Malibu mansion. I saw pictures of this thing. Pretty nice view. He wants $ 8. 5 million. It has six bedrooms and is on a privately gated 1.3 acre property.

I wonder why he’s selling it. If I just had to guess, insurance? Probably expensive there. It’s got an incredible ocean view, manicured lawns, and a gorgeous pool and spa, an outdoor patio. I saw a picture of a nice theater that I could hang out in, and I don’t know, what would I watch?

Star Trek? Anyway, I don’t have $ 8. 5 million. This podcast does well, but not that well. There’s also space to park 15 cars. What am I, Jay Leno?

John Goblicon, the wisecracking goblin frontman of the metal band NecroGoblicon. He’s also a comedian. And stars in No One Survives, a new horror comedy series which blends dark comedy, horror, and practical effects. In No One Survives, we follow John Goblicon as he attempts to navigate the everyday frustrations of human life. But unfortunately, when you’re a goblin, even ordinary problems have a tendency to take a killer turn.

John Goblicon also hosts the Right Now podcast with John Goblicon. And the Toronto Guardian does a series where they speak with local comedians, one of them, comedian Andrew Barr. Andrew was asked his influences. I like this answer. He said, I think I’m molded by the people around me that I perform with a lot.

I don’t watch much comedy outside of seeing it live. I can enjoy a special at home and occasionally, you know, I think there’s no better way to take in the art form than being in the room with it. What’s your favorite place to have performed? He said, favorite Toronto Yuck Yucks. When it’s full, it has the best energy of any room in the country.

Most interesting? Love this answer. The Bear Oaks nudist resort. You perform naked and the crowd is naked. When a joke doesn’t work, at least you can pause and look at some boobs.

All right, what’s your favorite bit you’ve written? Why are we proud of it? He said, all my stuff is about going to rehab. For a long time, I’ve been pretty good at writing jokes, but for most of my early career, the jokes weren’t terribly personal. I’m proud of taking the hardest part of my life and turning it into something people can share a laugh about and something that might inspire others to get sober.

All right, tell us about Toronto. He said, a lot of Canada does Toronto wrong. Sorry, I always do this. I always say Toronto. You’re supposed to swallow that second T.

For somebody who says Saturday Night Live, you think I could swallow some letters. Toronto, Toronto, with like two Ns at the end. A lot of Canada does Toronto wrong. And that’s why they don’t like the city. They come here for one day, go to the aquarium, spend the whole day in the worst, busiest part of town, decide the city sucks.

People who live here don’t go to the aquarium, do the fun stuff we do. This sounds like the New York advice, except this next thing, not my advice at all. He says, check out the nude beach. Ratio-wise, it’s a little guy-heavy. There are some boobs, but sparse.

Even if you were to count each boob individually, there are a lot more guys, put it that way. And some of the men are even contributing to the boob pile. Sounds like he thinks about boobs a lot. But it’s still a good time. Some people might think they’re too old to go.

I’ve been. No, you’re not. A lot of the old guys at the new beach are just dragging their stuff through the sand. All right, what do you got to promote now? He’s got a new special.

Andrew Barr goes nowhere. It is on YouTube. He said it is his single greatest achievement. He ran on a treadmill for 12 hours on stage at a comedy club and then immediately recorded a comedy special after running 104 kilometers. That’s a lot.

Holy cow. The whole day was a metaphor for addiction, and we raised a bunch of money for the rehab center that it went to. And that is your comedy news for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Featured: Dave Chappelle, Nathan Fielder, Bill Hader, David Cross, John Cryer, Jeff Probst, Giancarlo Esposito, Pamela Adlon, Louis C.K., Michael Chiklis, Anthony Bourdain, Elizabeth Holmes, Neil Brennan, Joel Kim Booster, David Mitchell, Robert Webb

What’s in This Episode

• New York Times 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century analysis
• Community ranked 97th on NYT list
• Eastbound & Down ranked above Community controversy
• Chappelle’s Show influence and ranking
• Nathan Fielder upcoming projects and hype
• Peep Show recognition and format explanation
• Better Things obscurity despite high ranking

Questions Answered in This Episode

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Full Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may contain spelling and/or transcription errors.

Hello, I’m Johnny Mac with your Daily Comedy News. Every now and then I do a article episode, and I just stumbled across that the New York Times did the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century. I’m not going to do all 100, and I haven’t even looked at this article yet. I’m doing this cold. I like to just react in the moment.

And since this is Daily Comedy News, we’ll only focus on the comedies, and we’ll see what’s there, okay? Okay. Now, number 100 is Scandal, so we’ll keep going. 99, Gilmore Girls. 98, The OA. What? Not a comedy.

Don’t get distracted, John. Don’t get distracted. Really? 97. Community. Okay.

One of my all-time favorites. Don’t you love Community? So how are we feeling? Is Community the 97th best TV show of the 21st century? I feel like this is criminally low, but I haven’t looked at the list yet.

Hmm. Keep that in the back of your mind. Should Community be higher? We’re told that was voted for by actor John Cryer. There’s a ballot.

Okay, 96. Halt and Catch Fire. 95. House. 94. The Diplomat. That’s a good show.

I don’t know if it’s better than Community. 93, Station Eleven, which was voted for by David Cross, interestingly enough. 92, The Night Of. That was on HBO. That was pretty good. Not many comedies here. 91, Catastrophe. 90, Eastbound and Down. Better than Community?

How much crack did you have, sir? That’s the Kenny Power Show. That was voted for by Jeff Probst, host of Survivor. Eastbound and Down, Better Than Community? No.

What’s going on on Survivor Island, Jeff? Something is affecting your brain. 89, Baby Reindeer. 88, Dexter. 87, Reservation Dogs. Come on. Really? Better Than Community?

Are you insane? No. This is crazy. 86, Shogun? I mean, pretty good, but, you know, kind of overrating things here, guys. Who’s making this list?

That was nominated by Giancarlo Esposito. 85, The Great British Baking Show. 84, Planet Earth. All right, I like that. I respect that. 83, Justified. 82, Better Things. Do you know what that is? I don’t even know what that is.

It’s an autofictional comedy from showbiz veteran Pamela Adion. She created it with Louis C.K. Who left after the second season. The Sunkissed series features a middle-aged actress living in the Hollywood Hills with her free-spirited mother and three indelible daughters. Better Things ran from 2016 to 2022 without me noticing, and there was a pandemic.

I have no idea what that is. Send the letters. I don’t care. You can get mad at me. If you’re throwing your phone out like, how do you not know what Better Things is?

I have no idea what this show is. I’ve never heard of it. Number 81, The Queen’s Gambit. 80, How To with John Wilson. Again, nice show. Voted for by David Cross again.

So apparently David Cross and I have different taste in television. 79. The Good Wife. 78. Oh my goodness. Come on. This is criminally low. 78.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. 2005 to the present. It’s like the longest running thing ever. Every episode is hilarious. How is this so low? Come on. 77.

Modern Family. You’re going to tell me Modern Family is better than Sunny? Get out. 76. Somebody Somewhere. An HBO comedy that argued that one person can come of age in any age?

That was a thing on HBO? Ran from 2022 to 2024? Should I know what that is? Is this episode today an example of the Mandela Effect? And I just jumped from another world where we had different TV shows?

I think that is what happened. Whatever this is, is Somebody Somewhere is the 76th best show of the 21st century? Okay. Okay. 75, Ted Lasso. Now, if you want to tell me season one was really good, if you want to tell me season one and two were pretty good, okay, I agree.

The four seasons of Ted Lasso, Better Than Community, Now, get lost. Number 74, The Bear. Is it a comedy? Is it not? For purpose of this show, it’s not. 73, Barry.

Mad respect for Barry. Barry’s a brilliant show. Kind of starts as a comedy and by the end is not a comedy at all, but it is wonderful. If you’ve never watched it, you should watch Barry with Bill Hader. 72, Squid Game. 71, Beef. Number 70, The Shield with Mac Packer Michael Chiklis, who’s a big comedy fan.

I love The Shield. I might have The Shield at number one on this list, period, but definitely not a comedy. 69, Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations. Boy, that should be a lot higher as well. I love Bourdain. Don’t we all love Bourdain? 68, Ozark, overrated. 67, Handmaid’s Tale. 66, The Rehearsal.

They write, if Nathan For You was the basement laboratory for Nathan Fielder’s mad scientist social experiments, The Rehearsal was the equivalent of handing him the keys to a super collider.

And now he’s got this Elizabeth Smart, is that her name?

Elizabeth Holmes? One of those. The woman with the, you know what I’m talking about, the thing everybody’s buzzing about. What is that called? John, you host a comedy show.

Could you look it up? Let me get this correct. I can never remember what that woman’s name is. It’s Elizabeth Holmes, and the documentary is called You Can See Everything. It’s got an R rating for language and some graphic nudity.

And the title’s called You Can See Everything, and it’s got graphic nudity. That has people going.. I wonder if they’re gonna, you know, I don’t know, but the Nathan Fielder hype is gonna be out of control soon. 65, Mayor of Easttown, better than The Shield? How much crack did you do? 64, different Anthony Bourdain, Parts Unknown. Yeah, Parts Unknown is better than No Reservations.

Okay, that’s fair. Good ranking. 63, The Thick of It, which ran from 2005 to 2012. You, of course, know what The Thick of It is. Apparently, it’s some sort of British show that I’ve never heard of. It’s on BritBox and Peacock, if you want to check that out. 62, Slow Horses. 61, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Better Than the Shield.

Are you crazy? 60, Peep Show. Yes, criminally underrated show. Good job, New York Times. This is David Mitchell and Robert Webb playing two dysfunctional roommates. I evangelize for the show all the time.

The gimmick that gives the show its title Peep Show was that scenes are shot from its main character perspectives and narrated by their internal thoughts. So, like, what would happen is if, say, I were here ranting about Star Trek and you were thinking, will he please shut up about Star Trek? I can’t stand when he talks about Star Trek. The camera would be on you trying to keep a straight face, but we would be able to read your thoughts going, I wish he would stop. Peep Show is amazing. 59, pen 15. 58, Chappelle’s Show.

Arguably.. The most influential comedy thing of the 21st century. I just made up that premise as I said the sentence, but we should talk about that. I mean, Chappelle’s show is majorly influential, is it not? It is.

For two plus seasons, our national conversations about race, sexuality, and entertainment had a sardonic commentary track in Dave Chappelle’s sketch comedy series co-created with Neil Brennan, who doesn’t get enough credit for that show. Inhabiting stereotypes in order to annihilate them, Dave Chappelle exposed with unflappable precision the cliches, prejudices, and appetites that defined our media-saturated culture. Now, John, you should break it number 50. But I’m going to take the break at Chappelle’s show because I want you to think about it. Continuing the New York Times best 100 TV shows of the 21st century, mainly commenting on the comedy parts of it.

Number 57, I think you should leave. It answers the questions. What happens when a hot dog car gets into an accident or how could I sneak a hot dog into a meeting? Probably overrated. 56, Nathan For You. This is going to be the year of Nathan Fielder where everything he touches will be hyped.

I’m not saying it shouldn’t be hyped, but will be hyped. 55, Insecure. No idea what that is. It was nominated by Joel Kim Booster, who says Insecure perfectly captures L.A. 54, The Bureau. I’ve heard of this. This is a French show.

It’s a thriller about the lives of secret agents, not a comedy. Don’t get distracted, John. Stay focused. Okay. 53, Stranger Things. 52, Downton Abbey. 51, The Good Place. Like the fifth best Ted Danson show?

Is better than The Shield? Is better than Community? I guess. 50, Parks and Rec. I never liked Parks and Rec. I know that’s an unpopular opinion, but I never really got into it. 49, Normal People.

No idea what it is. Not a comedy. Move on. 48, House of Cards, US version. I’m laughing here. They’re not even showing a picture of Kevin Spacey.

I know this isn’t a comedy, but this is one of my pet peeves. I know Kevin Spacey is canceled and horrible and all that, but when you put on Netflix and they show House of Cards and they don’t show Kevin Spacey, you’re kind of missing the point. It’d be like, not quite but showing the Cosby show and not showing Dr. Bill Cosby. You know, whether you like Bill Cosby or not, and probably not, he was kind of a big role on the Cosby show.

That’s how I feel about Kevin Spacey in House of Cards. And they’re not showing Kevin Spacey here. They’re showing Mrs. President. I can’t remember the actress’s name.

Robin Wright. And they’re showing her sitting behind the desk as if that was the point of House of Cards. Come on, get out. 47, Twin Peaks The Return. Really? Nominated by Brett Goldstein. 46, Broad City.

Okay. Let’s all take a deep breath, okay? Let’s all calm down here. Broad City. We all like Broad City.

We’re not saying Broad City’s bad. Broad City is good. It’s very good. Broad City is better than Community. That’s what you’re telling me.

No. 45, Happy Valley. Looks like one of those British shows. I’ll keep going. 44, BoJack Horseman. Okay. But, again, is it better than Community?

No. 43, Peaky Blinders. 42, Hacks. It’s won a lot of Emmys. I almost said it’s overrated, but it won a lot of Emmys, and people like it. Okay, I won’t be a hater. It was nominated by Graham Norton. 41, Louis.

Whoa! Are we going to give Louis C.K. A credit for doing good art? I know he’s canceled and the worst person who ever lived. Oh, no, that’s Jay Leno, the second worst person who ever lived.

I understand all that. But, wow, we’re giving Louis credit. The Times write, at this comedy’s creative summit, the life of a stand-up sitcom we’d been watching took a thrilling emotional turn into the surreal and refused to reroute. This makes me think they’re going to have Curb really overrated, right? I mean, Curb is good, but it’s a little overrated, let’s be honest. 40, Adolescence. 39, Watchmen.

Woo-hoo. The geeks are going to get mad at that ranking. 38, Homeland. Maybe Season 1. I don’t know about the rest. 37, Battlestar Galactica. One of the great comedies of all time, which gives me an excuse to talk to you about Battlestar Galactica for 15 minutes right now.

I’m kidding. I love Battlestar Galactica, but not a comedy. Stay focused, John. Maybe I’ll start a Galactica podcast. 36, The Pit. I mean, The Pit’s good, but after two seasons, I’m not sure it’s better than Battlestar Galactica. 35, True Detective. 34, Schitt’s Creek.

Who made this list? Stop. This is insane. 33, Enlightened. 32, Andor. Now, I love Star Wars. Just over here, like 10 feet from where I’m sitting, there are five Star Wars posters, and I’m not kidding.

But.. I don’t know, I found Andor boring. I know you’re supposed to be like, this is what Star Wars for adults should be. I don’t want Star Wars for adults. I want The Empire Strikes Back. 31, Survivor.

Oh, and they’re showing a picture of the season that had Philip, the federal agent, and Boston Rob. Boston Rob, actually right now, I’m adding Boston Rob to the Mac Pack. If you’re new to the show, the Mac Pack are my hypothetical celebrity friends that I hang out with, including Michael Chiklis. Boston Rob, you are now in the Mac Pack. I love Boston Rob because he’s just smarter than everybody else.

You know he’s conning you, but he’s so charming and he smiles and he goes, yeah, these idiots, they’re going to let me win the million dollars. And you’re like, yeah, Boston Robb tricked me into giving him a million dollars. Love Boston Robb. And I also love Philip the Federal Agent. And I love the early seasons of Survivor where they actually used to eat rats.

Modern Survivor isn’t that good. Survivor 50, couldn’t keep my attention. But the first season of Survivor, I have it on DVD. It is amazing.

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Also not a comedy. 30 Severance. 29, Key and Peele.

Love it. Okay, yes. All right. Keegan-Michael Key, by the way, is in the Mac pack. 28, Band of Brothers. 27, Better Call Saul. Black Mirror at 26.

The Leftovers at 25. I love that show. Deadwood at 24. The Comeback at 23. Yeah, The Comeback.

Have you ever met anyone who said, hey, did you see The Comeback? Maybe we should watch it, apparently. It’s pretty good. 22, Lost. I love Lost back in the day. Evangeline Lilly, she was on the crush list. 21, The White Lotus. 20, The Crown, which was the inspiration for our podcast Palace Intrigue, where we talk about the British royal family seven days a week.

Palace Intrigue, wherever you get your shows. 19, Chernobyl. I own that on Blu-ray. Chernobyl is fantastic. 18, Whatever I May Destroy You Is. It aired in 2020. I almost read the description, and it’s heavy, so there’s no fun there.

Just move on, John, okay? 17, The Americans. I love The Americans. 16, The Office UK. Okay. The Office UK at 16. I haven’t mentioned The Office yet, so are we making the argument that The Office USA is better than The Office UK?

I’m not sure that’s accurate. I know as Americans we love the American version, and I’m not saying the American version’s bad, but the UK version, and I just did a rewatch, is better. 15, Six Feet Under. 14, Friday Night Lights. All right, so before I even keep going here, so we haven’t said The Office yet. We haven’t said Curb yet. Trying to think what else I’m overlooking.

All right, 13 is Girls. 12, Arrested Development. I think that is a completely overrated show. I understand that’s an unpopular opinion. Never got it. Never got into it.

Never understood it. Don’t know why you guys are obsessed with it, but okay, fine. I’m not going to fist fight you over it. It’s not like it’s Adam Sandler. But no, I don’t know.

Number 11, The U.S. The Office. You know who nominated that one? The controversial MAGA comedian Nate Bregazzi. That guy, he stuck up for The Office.

Number 10 is Atlanta. Donald Glover’s pretty good show, but are you going to tell me Atlanta’s better than Community with both star Donald Glover? Can we flip those and put Community at 10? Apparently not. Nine, Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Okay. That was nominated by Mike Birbiglia. Oh, eight, The Incredibly Tremendously overrated 30 Rock. 30 Rock, carried by Alec Baldwin. Any scene Alec Baldwin’s not in? Not interested.

I know this is an unpopular opinion and we’re all supposed to worship Tina Fey and 30 Rock. I don’t. That’s number eight. Seven, Veep. Yes, we all love Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

She’s awesome and everything. But Veep is seven and Community was like number 94 or whatever I said it was. This isn’t right. Who made this list? Six, Game of Thrones.

Notice I said the F that time. Usually with my Queen’s accent, I say Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones? Hey, did you see Game of Thrones? That’s how I usually say it, but that time I said the F.

Number five, I’m going to throw my computer. We may not be able to finish the list. Number five, Fleabag. Get out. Just get out.

Get out. Should I even finish this list? Because the list is obviously stupid and insane. Four, Succession. Three, Mad Men.

To the wire. So I’m guessing here I’m going to scroll down and see the words bad and breaking. Let’s check. Number one, breaking bad. Pretty good show.

Can’t argue with that. All right. Let me know in the Facebook comments what you think of the New York Times list and what you think of my opinions. Facebook group, Daily Comedy News Podcast group. And I’ll see you tomorrow.

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