SiriusXM earlier this year replaced its long-running Raw Comedy channel, Channel 99, with Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, a 24/7 branded channel centered on Maniscalco and his show with Pete Correale, Deadline reported. Comedians and the nonprofit Stand Up for Stand Up say the change has harmed working-class comics who depended on Raw Dog airplay and the royalties that come with it, according to a piece by the nonprofit and social media posts cited by comedian Matt Ruby.
Comedians Say SiriusXM’s Maniscalco Channel Change Hurt Working-Class Royalties
SiriusXM earlier this year replaced its long-running Raw Comedy channel, Channel 99, with Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, a 24/7 branded channel centered on Maniscalco and his show with Pete Correale, Deadline reported. Comedians and the nonprofit Stand Up for Stand Up say the change has harmed working-class comics who depended on Raw Dog airplay and the royalties that come with it, according to a piece by the nonprofit and social media posts cited by comedian Matt Ruby.
As laid out in a piece by Stand Up for Stand Up, the change has been harmful to working-class comics who depended on Raw Dog airplay and the royalties that come with it, according to the nonprofit. The piece says over 75% of total plays have become concentrated among the industry’s upper echelon of comics, living and dead, impacting passive residual income going to comics at lower levels.
Comedian Matt Ruby wrote in a Monday installment of his Substack Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian that Maniscalco’s new channel “is crushing middle class comedians who rely on payments from the company to pad income.” Ruby also wrote, “Now some are fighting back. (Thanks to them!)” and linked to social posts from comics including Liz Miele and Greg Stone, who lay out the issue in full.
In a video posted to Instagram, Miele said the Raw channel went from playing 800 working class comedians to now playing less than 300 celebrity comedians, including Joan Rivers, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope and Norm Macdonald. She said every working-class comedian kicked off the channel is “quite aware” of the change and called it “devastating.” Miele said hundreds of comedians will no longer be able to have these royalties, and that working-class comedians who only make money on the road, have no safety net and depend on this money to survive are going from having that money to nothing.
Miele said Maniscalco was perhaps unaware of the impact of his SiriusXM rebrand on the broader comedy community, but that “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.” Deadline has reached out to reps for SiriusXM and Maniscalco for comment and will update the story if statements come in.
- The source does not state the exact date earlier this year when SiriusXM replaced Raw Comedy with Maniscalco’s channel.
- The source does not state how the over 75% figure was calculated, what period it covers, or whether it has been independently verified.
- The source does not state the total number of plays, the royalty rates, or the amount of residual income lost by lower-level comics.
- The source does not state SiriusXM’s reason for the change or its criteria for selecting comedians for the channel.
- The source does not state whether Maniscalco or SiriusXM had editorial control over the channel’s playlist.
- The source does not state any response from SiriusXM or Maniscalco to Deadline’s request for comment.
- The source refers to the channel as Raw Comedy, Raw Dog, and Raw and does not clarify whether those names all refer to the same channel.