Just got a comment on our giant LCS wrapup posting. It goes like this:

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break– not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don’t really need the money– just more exposure. Who would have thought the execs at NBC could be so dumb. Do they think that none of their viewers have Comedy Central in their cable plans? Last year I was shocked to see folks like Gabriel Iglesias. Is NBC taping this stuff and leaving it on a shelf for a year, or what? Let’s see…how many professionals have I seen on a show that’s billed like an amateur contest? Arj Barker, Ralph Harris, Sabrina Matthews, Dwayne Kennedy, Amy Schumer, Doug Benson, etc.. It’s like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol. You know the real amateurs have NO shot. Even worse, a lot of the pros use some of their same material. It’s like a pathetic rerun of routines I’ve already seen. If you’ve already been on TV, you should not be allowed to be on this show! Comedy Central already has a contest for the best stand-up of the season. Maybe they should offer prize money to lure these camera hogs away from those trying to get their first break.

Where do we begin with this big pile of dumb?

At the top.

Letting the pros in on this is a flawed concept. I want to see people trying to get their first break– not a bunch of people I know are getting paid and don’t really need the money– just more exposure.

Watching a bunch of “people trying to get their first break” doing standup comedy would be a mixture of painful, boring and largely unfunny. How do we know this? Because the vast majority of standup comics start out as painful, boring and largely unfunny. It takes a long time to get good at it.

As for who needs the money and who doesn’t, we’d like to see the magic formula determining exactly who might “need the money.”

(H)ow many professionals have I seen on a show that’s billed like an amateur contest?

Last Comic Standing is not now, nor has it ever been, “billed like an amateur contest.” It is a reality series that seeks to find “the funniest new comedian in the world.” (According to NBC’s own website.) By “new,” they mean new as in undiscovered or not known to the general public. Arj Barker may have had a special on Comedy Central, but the audience for a cable outlet isn’t large enough to make anyone a mainstream star, especially compared to the power of a network television outlet like NBC.

To the comedy fan, Barker, Benson, Matthews, et al, may be familiar names. To the watchers of Comedy Central, they might seem to be stars, but to the average NBC viewer, they are “new” and the audience is “discovering” them for the first time, with the help of LCS.

The website also says that the three talent scouts are “traveling across the globe to find the best professional and aspiring comedians.” But the word “amateur&quot is never used.

It’s like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston showing up to audition for American Idol.

Actually, no, it isn’t. The rules on Idol specify that a contestant cannot have previously had a recording contract. We believe that Ms. Dion and Ms. Houston have each been recording for the better part of twenty years. But Idol is clearly an amateur talent contest. LCS is not.

We’re puzzled by the public’s constant confusion of the two formats.

Let us end this posting by quoting ourselves. From a comment that we posted yesterday:

The first season featured a good number of seasoned veterans of comedy. As has each consecutive season. As does this season. In spite of the efforts of the producers to ram green comics into the process, it is the experienced ones who stand out, who make an impact in their brief turns or who eventually dominate the final ten.

If it were up to us, there would be even more experienced comics vying for the top prize. If it were up to us, this silly town-by-town “talent search” conceit would be replaced by an invitation-only process, based on review of video tapes, submitted by comics themselves or by their representation. But that somehow goes against the already calcified conventions of reality TV– a genre that, though only a decade old, has already veered into self-parody.