SiriusXM Gave Sebastian Maniscalco a Comedy Channel. The Comics Who Lost It Have Notes

For years, SiriusXM had a channel called Raw Comedy. It played stand-up from a wide pool of comedians, including a great many you've never heard of, which was the point. For a working comic, getting your album played there meant being heard in cars across the country, and a small check every time it happened.

That channel is now Sebastian Maniscalco's Comedy Radio, a station curated and headlined by Maniscalco, who is, by any measure, one of the most successful comedians in the country. SiriusXM says it reviews how its channels perform and chose a new creative direction, with comedy still on the platform. Comedians including Margaret Cho and Michelle Wolf have said publicly what they think of that, and what they think is that the people losing out are the ones who needed the channel most: lesser-known comics who lose their exposure and their residual checks.

Here's the part that's hard to joke about, so I'll do it carefully. A comedy album played on the radio isn't glamorous money. It's gas money. It's the difference between taking the road gig in Ohio and not taking it. When a big channel goes from a hundred voices to one main voice, the famous comic doesn't notice. The fellow driving to Ohio does.

Now, in fairness to Maniscalco, he didn't invent satellite radio's business model, and SiriusXM has defended the change as its own decision. It's not his fault his name is the one on the sign. But that's the thing about having your name on the sign. People throw rocks at the sign.

The lesson, such as it is: in show business, every time somebody gets a bigger plate, somebody else finds out the table was smaller than they thought. The comics aren't angry because Maniscalco got a channel. They're angry because, for a while there, they had one too.