We flew (Southwest, of course!) into St. Louis, then drove the hundred miles to Springfield, IL– the state’s capital. We were expected there for two consecutive engagements at country clubs.

The Local Info packet in our hotel room said that there was a Funny Bone five minutes away. And, by golly, they weren’t lying. After our Friday night show, we hopped on over and caught the last half-hour of headliner Vince Morris.

It’s always great to encounter a fellow comedian on the road. We had seen Morris’ special on Comedy Central, we were intrigued by his Sellout Comedy Tour project. And we had met him once before! (At the Las Vegas Comedy Festival… so long ago– 2003!)

We’re back in the comfort of SHECKYmag HQ– Flying RAWKS!– and we’re working locally this weekend– at The Comedy Works in Bristol, PA. All is right with the world.

An item on The Politico entitled “Limbaugh Lets Loose,” about the Miss America pageant’s “Judge of the Night” competition (no doubt an unofficial portion of the proceedings, for amusement only) contained the following:

Limbaugh’s moves won him the “Judge of the Night” title. His prize: a “Mr. New Jersey” sash bestowed upon him by the host, Miss New Jersey 1995 Dena Blizzard.

Blizzard is well-known to crowds in South Jersey and Philadelphia as a standup comic. The calendar on her website says she was “Miss America Preliminary Host” on Thursday night.

A Vanity Fair article has wisdom from Joan Rivers regarding the current round of late night wars.

Fox’s The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers was short-lived and widely panned, and is often mentioned in the same sentence as Chevy Chase’s disastrous wee-hours outing. She’s out at Sundance for her new documentary about her life, A Piece of Work, and spoke with West Coast editor Krista Smith about why Leno isn’t funny and why Conan should be grateful to have been fired by NBC.

It’s a video interview. Lots of good stuff. As for Rivers’ show being the same magnitude goof-up as Chase’s: It wasn’t nearly as bad. It was bad for vastly different reasons. And it was Fox… then a fledgling network… not the Fox of today. Had Rivers been given the same chance today, with the new and improved Fox, it would give the good ol’ boys a run for their money. Many people have been grind up in the gears of a new network trying to make a run at NBC’s late night dominance. (Look up Joey Bishop and his late night venture on ABC. The network had been around since 1948, but was only gaining steam for a coupla years before they put Bishop up against Carson. Ask Regis Philbin about it if you ever end up in the same room with him.)

Years later, Fox tried with Chase. The results were legendary. (But hardly Fox’s fault.)

Should Conan decide to go with Fox, we doubt that the failures of Chase and Rivers would have any effect on his ability to deliver a competitive show. But all this history does make one wonder… We saw the premiere of Chase’s show. It was epic.

As for being any kind of source on the most recent late night wars, Rivers should know: She was at the epicenter of the talent/power quake that was the Tonight Show.

The comments are, as usual, filled with the spittle-flecked rants of people who actually have the time to devote to passionate defenses of the players involved… and dark condemnations of their least favorite players. A nice example:

Joan Rivers bad mouthed the good man who so graciously gave her, her start; Johnny Carson. If anyone ever gave her any benefit of the doubt about her slander, this ought to settle that once and for all.

Huh? What ever.

Meanwhile, the NYT is re-running an opus by Bill Carter, the guy who wrote the book on Letterman, Leno and the network battle for the night, it was called, “The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno and the Network Battle for the Night.” Appropriate. Read the giant excerpt here. Click through all seven pages. Or buy the book. We’ve got a copy here at SHECKY HQ… at least we had a copy… hope it’s still around, as used copies are going for $112.50! A great read for anyone in the business. If you can’t afford the C-note, check out NYT’s re-run of Carter’s account.

To win a pair of tickets to the opening night Magners Comedy Standup Stand-off performances and launch party, become a fan of Magners USA, sponsors of a festival… a comedy festival… in Boston… that we had no idea existed until just now. Click on the illustration below to be whisked to their Facebook page. They’re giving away five pairs, so calculate your odds and have at it.

Back on the 18th, comic Paul Bond posted the following on his Facebook status:

A WARNING TO COMICS: I’m not a fan of posting negative things in my status but ALL comedians should be aware of a scumbag in the business who is Steve Trevelise. He just cancels a date on you by texting the manager, saying he double booked you. When I called him and asked why it happened, and he basically said if I don’t like it, I can go fuck myself.

We saw that coming.

We too had been treated with grave stupidity by Trevelise– he canceled our Dec. 26th show with little notice, no compensation and no decent explanation– but we were holding out hope that Trevelise’s stupidity was the all too common moronic kind of stupid, and not the inconsiderate or vicious kind of stupid that one encounters (thankfully) only rarely.

Turns out it was moronic, inconsiderate and stupid! A trifecta of mental weakness served with a bonus dollop of some of the worst business instincts we’ve seen in 28 years in the business.

When we posted about it back in November, we were guardedly optimistic. Then one of the principles– comic Joe Matarese— severed ties with the venture. Not a good sign.

After Rascals folded, we lost our “home club,” a place where we could headline a couple times a year, get some press, pack the joint and have a good time. That club died a slow death because of mismanagement from afar. But even in its waning months, it drew healthy crowds and actually felt like a comedy club.

When the Sarcasm deal was struck, we had very high hopes! Perfect– a well-run club just minutes from our house! Now, because of the jaw-dropping ineptitude of the owner, we give the venture little chance of survival. He obviously holds comedians in low regard, he insists on torturing the audiences by emceeing many of the shows and he seems to have little idea of how a comedy club should be run. It’s a disastrous combo.

Bond’s account of his interaction with Trevelise was probably 100 per cent accurate. Our recent dealings with him via email are stunning in their ham-handedness, rudeness and stupidity.

If there’s anyone out there with deep pockets and just a shred or two of business sense, South Jersey needs a decent comedy club. There are probably half a million people within a 15-minute drive of any location in Cherry Hill. And, in a few weeks or so, you’ll have the entire market to yourself.

UPDATE from a Herald Dispatch story, 2:59 PM Saturday: He’s facing one to five years if convicted. Two patrons claimed Dick groped them at the bar. Huntington Bone’s manager bailed Dick out with $6,000, claiming nothing happened, that they were only at the bar ten minutes.

According to a press release issued at 12:26 p.m. Saturday from the Huntington Police Department, officers responded to a call to investigate “two alleged incidents of a patron engaging in non-consensual sexual contact with a bar employee and another patron.”

* * * * * *

He’s done something to get arrested, this time in Huntington, West Virginia, while booked at the Funny Bone. Details are sketchy.

The 44-year-old is charged with two felony counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He is being held at the Western Regional Jail until his arraignment later Saturday.

What constitutes sexual abuse in the first degree? Not sure what it is in West Virginia, but in Kentucky it’s:

510.110 Sexual abuse in the first degree.

(1) A person is guilty of sexual abuse in the first degree when:

(a) He or she subjects another person to sexual contact by forcible compulsion; or
(b) He or she subjects another person to sexual contact who is incapable of consent because he or she:

1. Is physically helpless;
2. Is less than twelve (12) years old; or
3. Is mentally incapacitated; or

(c) Being twenty-one (21) years old or more, he or she:

1. Subjects another person who is less than sixteen (16) years old to sexual contact;
2. Engages in masturbation in the presence of another person who is less than sixteen (16) years old and knows or has reason to know the other person is present; or
3. Engages in masturbation while using the Internet, telephone, or other
electronic communication device while communicating with a minor who the person knows is less than sixteen (16) years old, and the minor can see or hear the person masturbate; or

(d) Being a person in a position of authority or position of special trust, as defined in KRS 532.045, he or she, regardless of his or her age, subjects a minor who is less than eighteen (18) years old, with whom he or she comes into contact as a result of that position, to sexual contact or engages in masturbation in the presence of the minor and knows or has reason to know the minor is present or engages in masturbation while using the Internet, telephone, or other electronic communication device while communicating with a minor who the person knows is less than sixteen (16) years old, and the minor can see or hear the person masturbate.

(2) Sexual abuse in the first degree is a Class D felony, unless the victim is less than twelve (12) years old, in which case the offense shall be a Class C felony.

Take your pick.

We especially like the part where he exposes the lunacy surrounding music licensing.

Nice idea. And great execution!

Of course, it’s probably all horseshit– the Veyron goes for $1.5 to $1.7 million, and they probably only rented it, and “Satisfaction” will get cut out of subsequent re-runs of the episode… if it gets shown again at all!– but it’s still a great comedy idea and it is very much in keeping with the tone and sensibilities of previous Conan-hosted shows. And the audience is getting a thrill out of seeing dirty laundry aired and O’Brien operating with the air of someone who is simultaneously crushed but giddy with the realization that he has nothing to lose by dumping on his soon-to-be ex-employer in a very public way. If NBC had any sense (or sense of humor), they’d join in the frolic and maybe pick up some P.R. points by playing along. Couldn’t you see Conan in a fake boxing match with Jeff Zucker? No? Neither can we. Let’s face it: People like Zucker and Ebersol have zero sense of humor, otherwise they couldn’t have made it to the top of a behemoth like NBC-Universal.

Speaking of which: Isn’t that a publicly-held corporation? So… as fake as it is, the Bugatti-Veyron Mouse bit has to rankle some of the stockholders. Maybe it is such bits that will hasten the replacement of Zucker at the top. Those few remaining in the network’s employ can only hope.

Speaking of great comedy ideas from Conan-hosted shows, we wonder if The Masturbating Bear (and other characters from Late Night) will actually be regarded as NBC’s intellectual property. (We’ve seen statements to that effect. And such was the case when Lettermen fled to CBS.)

We figure that Conan’s writers will merely switch The Masturbating Bear to The Masturbating Dog. And Triumph the Insult Comic Dog will switch from being a rottweiler to a cigar-smoking black bear. (Does Smigel have some sort of special contract? He’s been making appearances using the foul-mouthed Rickelsian pooch for some time now. Does he get to walk with the creation?)

From Norm Clarke’s gossip column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal comes this account of a Wish I Was There moment:

Righthaven LLC has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post to sue ‘mom and pop’ websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, public interest, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to settle out of court. Nearly all cases are being filed in a Nevada Federal Court and must be fought in this jurisdiction. You are not safe from Righthaven if you are out-of-state.

We have removed the quote in order to protect ourselves from legal action.

DAMN! Why couldn’t we have been at this show, instead of the one in May?!

Letter of apology? To whom? Lewis? Certainly not the audience… that’s a bonus, in our book! It’s like going to the Grand Ole Opry and seeing someone collapse from “exhaustion!” (We came close… It was Skeeter Davis’ birthday the night we visited the GOE back in 1988 and she was… exhausted!)

Greene doesn’t owe anyone an apology. From everything we’ve ever read, we figure there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people who would like to give that same message to Jerry Lewis.

H/T to C.R.!

The press release says:

LAST COMIC STANDING SEASON 7
Last Comic Standing is back with lucky season 7! This season we’re bigger, better and more competitive than ever! This season we’ll be holding east coast auditions in New York and west coast auditions in Los Angeles. If you think you have what it takes to be the next Last Comic Standing, show us your best two minute set at either of our open calls.

AUDITION INFORMATION:
MARCH 2010
6
LOS ANGELES, CA IMPROV COMEDY CLUB

MARCH 2010
21
NEW YORK, NY GOTHAM COMEDY CLUB

You could be the next LAST COMIC STANDING!

They sent it out as a file with a “.docx” extension… only openable with Word 2007. Hadda use an online file conversion thingie called Zamzar. It worked!

That’s it? Just L.A. and New York?

Anyway, the rumor is true– NBC is bringing back the only primetime show that features standup comedy (now that Jay Leno has been returned to late night television). At least we think it was NBC who sent out the release. (Actually, it was the producers of the show, not NBC– Ed.) There was no logo. And the return address was a gmail account. Hmmm…

Stay tuned.

CORRECTION has been made to the NY and L.A. audition dates in the press release. It is now correct. Again. It’s Mar. 6 or 7… trust us, this time it’s right.

The Daily Caller, the “HuffPo-style political news and entertainment site” launched earlier this month by erstwhile CNN talking head Tucker Carlson, has published a piece by The Female Half. She penned the essay, entitled “In Haiti debate, crazy comes from both sides,” after recent statements by gaffe machine Pat Robertson and Hollywood “activist” Danny Glover.

Catch her daily musings on politics, culture and entertainment at her blog, “Road Atlas Shrugged.”

As we watch late night history being made, with an internet-enhanced, front row seat for this incarnation of Talk Show War II.

FOS Kliph Nesteroff provides an account of a late-night talk show disaster that is rarely talked about… not even by the principal participant– Jerry Lewis.

Forty-seven years have passed and Lewis has rarely talked about the show. In his most recent book Dean & Me (2006, Broadway) Lewis devoted one sentence to The Jerry Lewis Show. “After a successful stint guest hosting The Tonight Show … I tried a talk/variety show that didn’t quite jell.” The book actually devotes more time to a Martin & Lewis anecdote about the time Jerry asked Dean Martin to assist him in picking crab lice from his pubic region (I am not joking). Obviously the disaster is a sore point that Lewis would much rather forget. And as we see another late night disaster play itself out before our very eyes between Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien and NBC, it is easy to see why.

Nesteroff’s article is called “Late Night Distemper of our Times.” It’s well worth the read. And don’t skip the notes at the end!

Nikki Finke says Ron Meyer has been brought in to minimize the damage caused by Jeff Zucker and try to negotiate a deal with Conan.

The deal as sketched puts Jay Leno back hosting The Tonight Show, and Conan O’Brien exiting with a lot of money. But there are still some terms to be worked out– which is why there hasn’t been any announcement yet.

Next stop Fox?

We were awakened by our phone the other day… at 8:10 AM. And the caller left no message. We star-69-ed it and got an Indiana number. We know a few people in Indiana. But they’re all comedians. And a comedian would never call another comedian before 10 AM!

We Googled that and got the phone number for the Indianapolis Business Journal. We called it and learned that Kathleen McLaughlin was doing a story on the shrinking comedy business in the capital of the Hoosier State. “City’s once-thriving stand-up comedy scene fades” is the title.

We knew that Oneliners shut its doors in June of 2008 after 15 years of operation.

And we had heard that Morty’s closed– their last show was on NYE.

We figure the case could be made that it’s shrinking. But we hadn’t thought of the Indianapolis market as “fading.” And we figure that, considering that the city still has two clubs, it’s thriving more than say, Philadelphia (which only has one!) or any number of comparable markets that don’t have the luxury of two venues.

But they write these headlines after the interview.

Our conversation with Ms. McLaughlin was pleasant. Our chat resulted in some good quotes, apparently– our pearl of wisdom kicks off paragraph four and, we daresay, forms a nice cornerstone and pivot for the story!

“Indianapolis is a great market for comedy,” said New Jersey-based comedian Brian McKim, who also edits Shecky Magazine, a blog/magazine.

McKim is among the industry insiders who attribute comedy’s strong run locally to the presence of Bob and Tom, the nationally syndicated radio hosts who’ve built their show around visiting comics.

“It puts stand-up in the forefront of everybody’s brain,” McKim said.

WHAT? No link?!?!

Anyway, we stand by what we said. Of course, Indy is not a great market for us personally. We haven’t performed there since we moved back east from L.A. in 1993. (Actually, we headlined One-Liners back in 2005 or so… but that’s outside the city limits. But The Male Half sat in on Bob & Tom for about three hours, so we suppose that’s performing in Indianapolis!)

If you read the story, it’s not a “Comedy is dying” story as much as it’s a “Running a comedy club is not for everybody” story. One-Liners proprietor Dave Wilson says he was “too busy.” The folks that ran Morty’s (into the rich, fertile Indiana soil) seemed to have made several fatal business calculations.

From what we hear, the two remaining clubs (now named Crackers) are doing just fine. And, like we said, Indy ranks 33rd among metropolitan statistical areas. 33rd! Two clubs! Not bad!

At 1:22 PM today, this hit the wires:

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif., Jan. 12 /PRNewswire/ — Conan O’Brien released the following statement.

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

SOURCE Conan O’Brien

Emphasis ours. It sounds like he is willing to walk. And this statement is a forehand smash… the ball, it seems is back in NBC’s court.

We’re posting this from the Bolt Bus. That’s right, we’re whizzing along the New Jersey Turnpike, laptop ablaze, accessing the internet onboard a bus– er, luxury motorcoach– after trekking to Manhattan this afternoon to do an interview for an upcoming documentary about standup comedy. Is not this technology the coolest thing ever? (We mean the internet and the laptop… not the bus so much.)

Bolt Bus: Regular service between Cherry Hill, NJ (minutes from SHECKYmagazine HQ!) and 34th and 8th Ave in NYC for anywhere from $1 to $10 each way. Total time of the trip is about 1:50, sometimes a bit longer, sometimes a bit shorter. We’ve done it three times now and we’ve found the buses to be clean and– so far– safe. And they’ve got wireless!! And AC outlets! And a bathroom… although we haven’t used it once… because, well, it’s a bathroom on a bus!

As for Conan: He sounds crushed. He also sounds like he’d bolt in a second. But he sounds like he’d rather stay. (But we have little faith that NBC will “do the right thing,” whatever that is.) Sounds like Leno is the man who is between a rock and a hard place. What. A. Mess.

We feel for all parties involved. Especially Leno. Forced out of 11:30 (when at the top!), compelled to do a show at ten (thereby incurring the wrath of all kinds of Hollywood types), then publicly repatriated to the 11:30 spot for a half-hour show– all the while keeping his (famously large) chin up.

From Deadline.com comes all kinds of new info in the ever-changing landscape at NBC! It’s a shootout!

That’s the word on the street. From Bill Carter, blogging for the NYT:

And while executives said that no final decision has been made, they did not deny that the network is considering moves that could include returning Mr. Leno to his old job as host of The Tonight Show.

Emphasis ours. The inclusion of “could include” makes this interesting. Allegedly, the affiliates are peeved that their newscasts are suffering because of the 10 PM show’s weak lead-in.

Earlier, Carter blogged that a rumor “that appeared on a Web site called FTVLive, was followed by an interview with its author on KNX radio in Los Angeles, who cited network sources saying Mr. Leno’s show would be dropped, perhaps as soon as after NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics concludes next month.”

Will Conan hold his ground? Can he? Will he get bought out? Whatever will they do with Jimmy Fallon? Will Leno end up on Fox?

Will there be a bunch of writers, tech dudes and others stranded in SoCal? (We can think of worse things.)

Or it might end up with Conan at 12:30, doing it from L.A., Leno at 11:30, just like old times, Fallon bumped to 1:30. What becomes of Carson Daly?!?

We were watching the tube the other night when we saw a promo for the new Michael Cera movie “Youth In Revolt.” Yeah, we know– you gotta really be paying attention to catch one of those ads… they’re only running them every six or seven minutes.

One of the stars of the film is Zach Galifianakis.

When they get to mentioning that he’s in the movie they identify him as “Zach Galif… uh… Gali… uh… that guy from ‘The Hangover!'”

Ha! Pretty clever, huh? You see… he has such a long and unpronounceable name… oh, forget it. If you have to explain the joke…

We’ve since seen another version of the commercial that actually says his name (and pronounces it correctly). Was it an attempt at humor? Was it an attempt at linking the two movies and capitalizing on the success of The Hangover? (It’s closing in on a half billion dollars!) Was Galifiniakis in on the gag? Is he pleased with the goof on his name? Is he a big enough star that he can go by “Zach?” (Or go by “That guy from ‘The Hangover?'” So many questions.

A Continental gate agent flagged the passport of Joan Rivers, citing the comedian’s two names. (Her name is Joan Rosenberg, but she goes by the name Joan Rivers. You may have heard of her. Apparently Continental gate agents aren’t familiar with her.)

Transportation security had a very bad couple of weeks.

But, when you base transportation security on shaky premises and refuse to base it on good, solid logic because it might be “unfair, irrational or degrading” to someone, then you have a situation where Joan Rivers misses her flight.

We know that Rivers hasn’t exactly been burning up the airwaves with television appearances lately, but she’s an icon. Even a Continental gate agent should have known that Joan Rivers couldn’t be a terrorist. Or is the Continental gate agent (and the airline’s policy with regard to security) so totally disconnected from reality that she wasn’t aware that it was absolutely ridiculous to cause Rivers to miss her flight back to New Jersey? Just how concerned are they with appearances that they would hassle a 76-year-old Jewish grandmother from Brooklyn?

The TSA is in worse shape than we can imagine.

She managed to snap off a few classic Rivers lines.

“If I were going to make up an alias, I wouldn’t pick Rosenberg. I’d pick Jolie or Pitt,” said Rivers, back home Monday in New York with her sense of humor intact. “Do terrorists wear Manolo Blahniks? I can tell you Donna Karan does not make anything that hides a bomb,” she said.

Perhaps the gate agent was a history buff… she might have suspected that Rivers was related to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and might therefore be carrying a small atomic bomb in her carry on.

The NYT obit lays it all out. She went solo as a comic when her male partner was drafted. The rest is history. (Although not very well known history.)

We’re passingly familiar with the name, but we haven’t seen her name mentioned in many books or articles.

From April 5, 1959, on The Ed Sullivan Show:

Judging from the description in the Times, we suppose a modern parallel to Carroll would be Rita Rudner.

From the obit:

Ms. Carroll’s comic gifts were perhaps nowhere more evident than they were one night in May 1948 at the old Madison Square Garden, when she performed at a benefit for the United Jewish Appeal. Israel had been declared a state that month, and after hearing impassioned speeches and the playing of “Hatikvah,” most of the audience was in tears. Then came Ms. Carroll’s turn.

It was a delicate spot for a comic to be in, as Mr. Howe recounted in interviews afterward. Unfazed, Ms. Carroll leaned into the microphone. “I’ve always been proud of the Jews, but never so proud as tonight,” she said. “Because tonight I wish I had my old nose back.”

That’s right: According to the industry rags, LCS may come back.

Why not? It’s cheap, it’s plugs a hole in the schedule (and, really, that’s what it’s all about for the failing networks) and it’s occasionally funny.

NBC is in talks to bring the series back and Paul Telegdy, the network’s head of reality programming, wants to have a new host and format changes, according to a report from Entertainment Weekly’s Hollywood Insider.

Telegdy? Who is this guy? Must be new. (Hold on, we’ll Google him… well… he’s new as of Jan. 5.)

We suppose this means that the show was killed by someone who is no longer at NBC. (Otherwise, the show would stay dead.)

This Telegdy fellow wants to bring it back, but he wants to change it. (So he can claim the credit should it become a ratings behemoth.) He wants a new host and a change in format. Oh, is that all?! Caroline Rhea‘s out– she’s already hosted a show called The Biggest Losers, so there might be confusion. Just kidding!

It’s already a pretty solid performer, so killing it was not the smartest move.

‘Comic’ averaged 5.2 million viewers and a 7 share among adults 18-49 when it last aired in ’08 and does well among adults 18-49 living in homes with $75K to $100k-plus incomes.

It’s spawned a crop of comics that can command a good chunk of change for a weekend at your local chuckle dispensary, so it’s done some good for the visibility of standup comedy. Standup in prime time is the rising tide that lifts all the comedy boats! So we say: Bring it back.

Besides, we get to pick it apart every week and grouse about it!

Is that an accurate summary of the article by Nick Zaino in the Globe?

Well, it’s much closer to the truth than that which is offered by Bill Blumenreich. The owner of the Wilbur Theatre has a habit of saying ghastly things about the competition. We suspect he attended the Vince McMahon School of Business.

Bill Blumenreich, Comedy Connection owner, says the club scene is over and the only way to make a profit now is with big names, which is his specialty. With the revenue from his new liquor license, he lined up an impressive roster of national acts at the theater, including Rob Schneider, Sinbad, Richard Lewis, Eddie Griffin, Pauly Shore, and Damon Wayans.

“They’re going to all fail,” Blumenreich says of the clubs. “The day of Boston comedians selling tickets have come and gone. These guys are very funny guys, and they have absolutely no ticket-selling ability.”

We posted about an ’08 Globe article, which quoted Blumenreich just after he finished sinking millions of dollars into the renovation of the Connection’s new home at the Wilbur, he said:

“I love the Boston comics,” says Blumenreich, “but the day of Boston people flocking to see local comedians has come and gone. You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone.”

Blumenreich’s pronouncements have all the subtlety of a Mike Tyson press conference. Does this goofy shit work on anyone? Are Globe readers/standup comedy fans going to heed Blumenreich’s silly predictions and spend their comedy dollars accordingly? Are the other club owners supposed to be quaking in their boots?

Actually, any first year psychology student might conclude that Blumenreich is terrified that he’s made a horrendous error. His fear drives him to desperate denunciations of his competitors and of the comedians that toil in “lesser venues.”

If the quotes that follow his are any indication, his terror campaign isn’t working. And, with the exception of Comedy Vault owner Dick Doherty– who refers to Don Gavin, Mike Donovan, and Frank Santorelli as “dinosaurs”– they all seem to have their heads screwed on straight.

Zaino wonders if all the clubs can survive. No such question is ever asked about Boston’s rock venues. Their music venues come and go. Large venues exist alongside tiny ones. Gargantuan venues like the TD Garden stoke the city’s affection for arena acts and whet their appetite for music of all kinds… which appear at The Paradise and at The Roxy and in small niche spaces.

They can survive with a combination of luck and savvy and marketing and a combination of up and coming local acts, mid-level out-of-towners and good, solid comedians– what Doherty might call “dinosaurs” (That there is some sharp marketing on Doherty’s part!). And if, in nine months, the majority of the clubs are still open for business, we should see an article on how the Boston comedy scene is exploding. But we are not holding our breath.

All this hand-wringing and trash-talking is unseemly.

We’ll see for ourselves– we’ll be appearing at Mottley’s Jan. 22-23. From what we can gather, it seems as though Boston is regaining some of the strength and stature that it had when we were semi-regulars there in the late-80s/early 90s. Stay tuned.

Brian Logan blogs in the UK Guardian about a gaggle of shows drawing crowds in England. Some of them are one-man shows that pay tribute to giants of comedy (Bob Golding as Eric Morecambe). Others are so-called “tributes acts” (like those “tribute bands”).

One such tribute act is Lee Lard, identified as “Britain’s number one Peter Kay tribute act.”

Peter Kay is/was a writer/producer/actor who enjoyed success on British television for the better part of a decade (no mean feat in England). Lard is promoted as, “Delivering his own hilarious ‘Peter Kay’ style of standup.”

We suspect that Lard’s show also contains lots of re-enactments from Kay’s three television series. (We don’t know, however. And our intrepid blogger Logan didn’t bother to go see the show in question, so he isn’t exactly sure, either.)

Howeve, this doesn’t stop Logan from speculating and worrying. “The very act of appropriating another comedian’s shtick makes us uncomfortable,” he frets. He wonders: Why is it that something that’s “acceptable” in music doesn’t seem right in comedy. He bobbles the question pretty good.

He then ponders the nature of standup and how a comic’s routine might be thought of as, “an extension of his or her soul.” (Commence eye-rolling here.)

(The comparison to music is bogus. Because of ASCAP and copyright laws, musical tributes benefit the artists, at least here in the states. Comedians do not have publishing houses or an ASCAP-like mechanism in place– SoundExchange notwithstanding. But the instances where anyone would either: 1) actually wish to openly mimic a comedian’s act or 2) actually pay money to see such an act, are rare… so why even make the comparison?)

Logan confuses the issue by including both the Morecambe tribute show and the Lee Lard show in his piece. Morecambe died in 1984 after an historic run on British TV. Peter Kay is still quite alive (although, as some argue in the comments, his career and his creative spark might currently be moribund), so such a “tribute” must necessarily be regarded as a different animal altogether.

We’re not quite sure how we feel about the whole Lee Lard/Peter Kay thing.

If the comedian who is being so “honored” truly wanted to squash this thing, he probably could do so easily.

And if folks wanted to stay home, they could.

So, it seems that Logan (and the gang who agree with him that this might be a pernicious and horribly crass trend) is more annoyed with the folks who flock to such shows (and less than thrilled with the comedians these throngs adore).

But isn’t such a phenomenon ultimately harmless?

We’re reminded of the folks who are obsessed with all things “Star Wars.” They see all the movies in the series, sometimes more than once. They buy the novelizations, they purchase the “Making of…” DVD, they pay good money to see “Chewbacca: The One-Man Show.” Is any of the ancillary stuff any good? Most likely not. It’s all probably just cranked out to capitalize on the popularity of the original. Does it signal the fall of our culture? No.

Of course, that’s a movie.

But we could easily imagine “Seinfeld: The Live Show!” complete with re-enactments of favorite Seinfeld scenes, all framed by a faux Jerry doing brief standup routines. (We can see faux Jerry now– the sleeves of his jacket rolled up, his modified mullet riding high!) And we wouldn’t be at all disturbed by hordes of Seinfeld fans (of the series, of the comedian) showing up in puffy shirts or Cosmo Kramer garb. Perhaps Steve Wynn should look into installing such a show into the same theater that hosted “Spamalot” (a show “lovingly ripped off from” the 1975 film “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” says their own website).

Reading the comments provides fascinating insight into the preferences and prejudices of Guardian readers– especially as they apply to comedy tastes. There also seems to be an undercurrent of class warfare and a bit of snobbery. From what we can discern, folks in the southern portion of England (Londoners, we suppose) aren’t all that thrilled with folks in the northern portion of England (anyone outside of London)– they regard their northern neighbors as rubes, as unsophisticated, as undiscriminating consumers of the dreck that is peddled by the BBC under the banner of comedy. Peter Kay seems to symbolize all that is wrong with them northern hicks.

It sounds vaguely familiar. Rather like the contempt that many folks here in America have for the folks who reside in the Southeastern U.S. or in “Flyover Country.” And there are a few comedians who are emblematic of those people. And their success is a thorn in the side of many entertainment writers and bloggers and tastemakers.

Commenter catlady141 brings some (sarcastic) sanity to the proceedings:

But it really is a bit much– all these working class northerners on the “telly.” Really, if you can’t be amused by nicely-spoken men who’ve been to Oxbridge, you haven’t a sense of humour at all. Some of us want to listen quietly and attentively to our comedy. The sort of loud laughter Kay and his ilk provoke is simply– dare I say it here– common. If comedy isn’t refined, difficult, upsetting and unfunny, it becomes mere entertainment. And that’s the last thing we want.

She’s hit the nail on the head. Logan’s whinging is merely a chance for him and his readers to marginalize a popular comedian. And, if they can elevate their favorites, and pat their fans (and himself) on the back for being so discriminating, it’s a win-win! Anyone having any doubts as to this motivation, just scope out the tiresome (and nakedly catty) comments of Stewart Lee at the end of the blog posting.

Lee’s vicious assessment of colleague Michael McIntyre is a bit embarrassing. He implies that McIntyre’s work is devoid of paranoia, menace and personality. And therefore, McIntyre has no right to perform (as he did recently) in front of tens of thousands at Wembley Stadium. Sounds familiar. (Wembley Stadium = TD Garden Fleet Center, anyone?)

Read all the comments if you want a snapshot of the British comedy scene.

H/T to Aaron Ward!

Are Howard Stern’s threats to quit just “empty talk?” Or is it, like the analysts say, “positioning for contract negotiations?” This is the big question posed in an article by AP business reporter Deborah Yao, as Stern’s contract with XM/Sirius comes up for renewal next year.

Will Howard walk on the satellite radio company? He doesn’t need them. He doesn’t need terrestrial radio. It’s going to come down to how much energy, how much entrepreneurial spirit Howard Stern has.

Here’s a quote from The King Of All Media himself:

Tomorrow I could go on the internet and start my own channel with my own subscribers. You’d be able to click and watch us on TV, watch us in the studio live, streaming. You’d be able to listen to us streaming. You’d be able to get us on your iPhone. You’d be able to do everything right at the click of the internet. I wouldn’t even need to work for a company. I’d be my own company… So true it’s ridiculous.

This quote from Stern formed the jumping off point for Jeff Jarvis’ October 23 blog posting, “Howard Stern 3.0: The Future of Entertainment.”

On the internet, Stern would get the complete freedom he has long lusted after. He would share his revenue and value with no one but his staff. Now that we can listen to radio over the internet– on our internet-enabled phones – we can listen to him anywhere (is this why he has refused to allow Sirius to put him on the iPhone? I’m still unhappy about that). He would have direct relationships with his fans. He could charge them… He could sell advertising in new ways. Fans could get him anywhere, anytime. If he’s smart– and he is– he could open up enough tidbits to go viral, letting his audience market him for free.

Read the whole thing. It provides the insight that the AP’s business reporter couldn’t.

She mentions the new technological options in paragraph 24!

Stern could leave to start a new venture, perhaps a subscription service that sends his show to PCs and mobile devices. Sirius already streams Stern’s shows online and through the iPhone. Or he could explore more options in cable TV, where his first pay-per-view special, “Howard Stern’s Negligee and Underpants Party,” was offered in 1988.

Emphasis ours– Yao gets this part wrong… As Jarvis noted (and Jarvis knows about stuff like this), Stern is not streamed via the iPhone. (Google it!)

The only way to get Stern on an iPhone is to crack it open and muck with it, voiding the warranty. Rare is the geek with the guts to do it.

Cable TV? Seriously?

Stern will probably flee XM/Sirius. Some folks say that there aren’t enough people out there with the equipment capable of getting his content. See the first comment on Jarvis’ piece:

My bet is he signs for a 1 or two year extension. I don’t think Internet radio is ready to go portable into cars just yet, and morning drive is his market…

This guy has it backwards. People like Stern drive the technology, they don’t wait for it to develop before they jump in. (Sirius signed him for just that purpose– to induce people to buy the gadgets needed to get him via the bird in the sky and subscribe to the service.) Once Stern goes internet, the number of iPhones and other internet-enabled gizmos purchased will explode yet again– and this time, the hottest-selling app will have Stern’s content. Or maybe strike a deal with Apple. The possibilities are endless.

Excellent article in Reason by Greg Beato on canned laughter. It seems we’ve always been aware of the laugh track and we’ve been aware of the dude that created the machine that provided most of the tracks.

Now, the laugh track is edging over into The Land Of Irony. Or so Beato would have us believe.

We’ve never been offended by it. Some folks have. Paul Krassner, for one:

Canned laughter is the lowest form of fascism. It is propaganda that falsely– almost subliminally– implies something is funny when it isn’t. It is TV’s ultimate insult to the audience.

Calm down, dude… have another hit on the bong and your anger will pass.

Standup comics (which Krassner claims to be) are well aware of the vagaries of crowd dynamics. When one audience member laughs, it can be rather uncomfortable… for him, for the comic, for the audience. When that cascade of laughter comes– when the entire room laughs after being kick-started by the first audience member to get to the heart of the punchline– it is great. That first pioneer gives the assembled “permission” to yock it up. Crowd dynamics are a strange beast. Now, multiply that by millions– an audience watching at home– and tell us that the laugh track isn’t genius.

If it had been divised in the age of the internet, it would have been called, “a virtual audience.” As it was concocted in the early days of television, however, it was labeled “canned laughter,” and ridiculed by folks like Krassner and others who got way too upset about things that were, after all, harmless.

We don’t depend on the laugh track. We enjoy a lot of shows that don’t use it. We’re not turned off by shows that do use it. And, as for live performances, we can often sit stone-faced in a room full of howling patrons, or we might find ourselves to be the only people in the room howling at the comic onstage. In other words, we have never really depended on cues– canned or otherwise.

Google “canned laughter” and you’ll see a lot of anti-laugh track screeds. So horrified are some Krassner-types (and so eager to condemn the laugh track) that they’ll say things like, “Only the first six seasons of M*A*S*H used a laugh track.” And they’ll post that the DVD collection of Get A Life gives the viewer the option of watching with or without the laugh track.

Hey: Had Better Off Ted been able to find a larger audience with canned laughter, it would have been a small price to pay.

Word on the street is that Houston’s Laff Stop will close after tonight’s shows. We’ve never worked there, but it’s been around for a long time. And it had a good digital recording system. (Mitch Hedberg recorded a CD there, as did many others.)

There was a consolidation a while back. (The Stop bought the Spot?)

The Improv moved into the market some time ago.

The economy sucks.

Take your pick among the various excuses.

Check out this blog entry on the Houston Chronicle website from 18 months ago. Of particular note are the comments under it.

Buried amid the (mostly boring) FAA website is this groovy map. It’s interactive, so all you need to do is click one of the dots and it’ll give you information on the severity of the delays (if any) at that airport.

Currently, the only airports that are experiencing delays are PHL and SLC. We suspect that a lot of those green dots will turn orange or maybe red– or even black (“This denotes a closed airport!”)– as this huge snowstorm lumbers up the east coast.

We publish a link to it here to save you all the trouble of wading through the FAA’s ponderous site.

It’s in the WSJ:

Starting in mid-January, McDonald’s will lift a $2.95 fee that it had charged customers for two hours of wireless Internet access, available at about 11,000 of its 14,000 domestic locations, McDonald’s USA Chief Information Officer David Grooms said in an interview.

We’ve moaned in the past about how cheesy it is for hotels and coffee shops to charge anything more than a nominal fee for wireless. Some hotels charge as much as $11 per day!

Earlier this year, the super-sized McDonald’s in Vegas (the one across from the Riv) was charging, then, in the spring, they were handing out a coupon with each purchase that entitled the bearer to a free hour. No doubt this was a pilot program to see just how much sales that the freeloaders would generate. Well,the verdict is in: Offering folks free wireless will turn your burger joint into a “destination!”

Just a heads up for our comedian friends. If you’re heading out on the road, hit this website to find out where the McD’s wireless hotspots are!

As the editors and publishers of the WWW’s most beloved (and, occasionally, most hated) magazine about standup comedy, we’ve occasionally been trapped in a room with someone about whom we may have said some harsh things. We’re no stranger to that uncomfortable feeling. (Although the discomfiture is largely imagined, one-sided… so far, our opinions haven’t resulted in any busted lips or “ugly scenes.” Most of our encounters with any potential adversaries have turned out to be non-events or, in some cases, downright cordial.)

So we were amused when we noticed that comedian and Frequent SHECKYmagazine Commenter Myq Kaplan appeared on Tonight last night– and that Guest Number One was none other than Wanda Sykes.

Kaplan, readers will recall, was among the contingent that dumped on us for defending Sykes after a blogger for Gawker.tv called Sykes “lazy” and “racist” for telling a particular Tiger Woods joke in a recent monologue on her talk show.

We sure hope the whole brouhaha wasn’t on Kaplan’s mind in the moments leading up to his performance– the last thing anyone needs when preparing for a network television show is any kind of distraction like that!

BTW: Congratulations, Myq. (We spelled it right that time.)

“Idol creator to launch new star search,” reads the headline. Simon Fuller, the man behind the Idol series, is bringing back Star Search?

Sadly, no.

That series ran from 1983 to 1995 and, at least for the first few seasons, was a major factor in launching the careers of many of today’s big standup figures.

A revival of such a series would be a boon to standup. But, alas, Fuller’s new project is not such a series.

If I Can Dream, says the article written from the press release…

…will chronicle five young people with Hollywood aspirations– a musician, an actor, two actresses and a model — as they leave their hometowns and live together in a house in the Hollywood Hills. Their journey will be streamed live around-the-clock at ificandream.com.

Can it be that certain internet conventions can already be said to be “square?” The WWW’s only been around since 1994 or so, yet some approaches to programming– like launching a series that “will exist primarily online– at least at first”– already seem hackneyed. (Actually, it may be smart to utilize the internet to test a show… but wouldn’t it be cooler if the producers leveled with us as to the exact strategy behind such a maneuver? It’s kind of like when the nets usta tell us that “summer replacement” sitcoms were being “tried out,” when the reality was that they were merely flushing never-to-be-greenlighted pilots out of the system. Level with us; we can take it.

Fuller says, “I am determined to continue challenging convention and pushing the boundaries of mainstream entertainment. Uh… there’s the small matter of The Original Amateur Hour,” which started on radio in 1934 and ran, in one form or another, on radio and/or television, until 1970.

Fuller actually says, “This is the dawning of a new age.” Dude, seriously? Merely hanging some doodads (Twitter, webcams, etc.) on this enterprise does not a new age make.

But why not have a comedian on this version? While having a comedian in the Hollywood Hills house wouldn’t guarantee that there’d be some laughs, not having one might guarantee that “Dream” will be a snoozefest with a lot of fabricated drama.

Weird Al Yankovic, Stephen Colbert, Patton Oswalt, Kathy Griffin, George Lopez and Spinal Tap were nominated for Best Comedy Album.

What’s striking about the list is the diversity– a song parodist, a faux news anchor, an alt comic, a monologist/story-teller, a straight standup comic and the stars of a fake documetary.

Yet you could probably find a vast number of people who like all or most of these acts. We’re always stunned at the tremendous variety within the larger field of comedy. There are a lot of successful comedians appealing to large audiences using wildly different approaches. Keep this in mind the next time someone tries to tell you that a successful ventriloquist is taking food out of the mouth of a sullen truthteller or a song parodist is muscling an insightful, clever and daring comic out of the club dates he deserves. It’s a big, crazy comedy world out there. And, from all indications, it’s wide open.

We recalled reading that Jake Johannsen was taping a special in Kansas City several months ago. (See the Kansas City Star’s account of that taping here.) That was back in February, as it turns out.

We were sniffing around on the website of the Showtime network when we came across this listing. “Jake Johannsen: I Love You” is most likely the result of last winter’s efforts. It will premiere Jan. 1 at 9:30 PM. (It will rerun four more times over the following week on the various Showtime properties.)

The Star’s Aaron Barnhart says that standup is a peculiar business because as a comic, you can’t just do standup, he says, you are also compelled “to make movies, you have to make sitcom pilots, you have to be a spokesman for baseball.” So, in addition to being on Letterman 35 times, Johannsen had to top his critically acclaimed special “This’ll Take About an Hour,” which ran on HBO in 1992. This latest special was directed by comedian (and editor of “The Aristocrats” Emery Emery, who is quoted liberally in the Star piece– he’s a K.C. native.

We hung out with Johannsen (and watched a hysterical set!) when he performed in Helium back in June. If the material we saw this past summer is included in the new special (and the chances are pretty much 100 per cent), it will be a spectacular success.

It’s a standup comedy contest via video on the WWW.

Win a chance to work a week at the Improv at Harrah’s in Vegas. To bring attention to the DVD release of “Funny People,” the folks at IJoke.com have concocted a contest– just upload your video clip to the site by midnight (PST) on Tuesday, December 8 and a panel of judges will sort through the entries, determine the top five videos, which will then be uploaded on Dec. 14. After that, you (that’s right, YOU) will get to vote on the top three until Dec. 20 at midnight (PST).

The three finalists will then be flown to Vegas to perform in the finals, when an as yet to be determined panel of judges will pick the winner.

The winner, like we said, gets a gig at the Harrah’s Improv next year.

See here for all the details. (Some registration is required to upload.)

And may the best comic (or the one with the most Facebook friends) win.

Jimmy Pardo and his Never Not Funny “Pardcast” will grind it out for nine hours starting at 9PM PST Friday and continuing on until 6 AM the next day. All in the name of charity.

The whole thing will be witnessed by 30 randomly chosen audience members and will feature some of show’s favorite guests as well as a few newcomers.

There’s a donation button at the above link– visitors can punch it and donate any amount to The Smile Train, which focuses on a single problem: cleft lips and palates. The charity provides free surgery to thousands who can’t afford it.

The old space, formerly occupied by Rascals, at the Cherry Hill Crowne Plaza, in Cherry Hill, NJ, will be a comedy club once again. This weekend, Sarcasm will open its doors, with Joe Matarese as the headliner and local radio personality Dennis Malloy hosting.

Matarese is a principal in the venture, along with local radio personality Steve Trevelise. (Comics may be familiar with Trevelise as he has managed and hosted the Catch A Rising Star in Princeton for several years.) Former Rascals GM Jason Pollock will manage the club.

The Male Half and The Female Half will appear there Dec. 26, for two shows!

As the club is a short, 10-minute hop from SHECKYmagazine.com HQ, the Halves of the Staff are ecstatic that comedy will return to the space. Back in the Rascals era, we had a decently-run comedy room right in our backyard and we were headlining it twice a year– ideal situation! We were scheduled to appear their just a week or two before Rascals pulled the plug– see this posting— back on June 30, 2007. (Readers will recall that Rascals abruptly ceased to operate a little over two years ago after the folks that ran Rascals got into some hot water with the SEC.)

It’s always a good thing when a club opens up during tough economic times. Folks need a laugh and, from a business standpoint, the club has nowhere to go but up. (The more business-savvy might take issue with that last point, but it makes sense that a club that opens when the economy is down would automatically benefit when/if the economy takes an upturn.)

The article in the Sun-Times, as best as we can tell, is about a documentary called “Phunny Business: A Black Comedy.” The club, All Jokes Aside (a ghastly name for a club!), was, “a haven for black comedians and black comedy mavens alike.” (We wonder: Do the mavens drink for free?)

Anyway, the club opened in 1991, closed in 1998. But, while it was open, it was the place to perform in Chicago for comics such as Bernie Mac, D.L. Hughley, Chris Rock and Sinbad.

Owner Ray Lambert reminisces:

“I wasn’t trying to censor anybody,” the low-key Lambert says in a roomy suite at Astrolab on West Erie, where he and co-writer Davies are editing their documentary along with fellow producer Brian Kallies. “I became a fan of stand-up, so then I went back and studied all the great comics. Or at least good black comedians. So I took pride in the fact that you had to have an act. [A set on TV’s] ‘Def [Comedy] Jam’ is seven minutes long, whereas in a club it’s a completely different animal. Our headliners were going to do 45 minutes or an hour. A feature is going to do 20 to 30. You really had to have something to say and a point of view.

“The idea of just cursing or shock value, it didn’t work because we had a really sophisticated audience. You had a broad range of people, from everyday working guys to a doctor, a lawyer. You covered everything, and you had to navigate those waters.”

When he started the club, he worked for Gardner Rich (Gardner is the man played by Will Smith in “The Pursuit of Happyness.”). The club was profitable, but…

…ultimately fell victim to financial and political circumstances that made its continued existence impossible. The implosion of Chicago’s glutted stand-up comedy scene didn’t help matters.

Say what? Since when do clubs fall prey to “political circumstances?” And what’s all this about a glut in Chicago? If you’re a niche club (even a 300-seat niche club), you should be immune to such economic pressures brought on by any gluts. Oh, well. We suppose it’s not an important enough story to check out such things.

The cryptic ending:

Gardner, too, thinks “a whole new thing” could live again. He’d even help bankroll it.

And location matters not, Gardner says.

“We would come.”

Well… what are you waiting for?