Essay: Comedys middle class is getting squeezed out. SiriusXMs Sebastian Maniscalco channel is just one example

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Set us as preferred On Monday, hundreds of professional stand-up comedians flooded Instagram and TikTok with front-facing videos outlining an issue in the comedy community that had been brewing for months.In April, SiriusXM radio changed the programming of its Raw Comedy channel previously known as Raw Dog — a 24/7 curated broadcast of comedy tracks from the albums of more than 800 living and working comedians — to Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio, a curated broadcast of mostly Mansicalco material and an odd mix of dead comedians and household names, cutting about 500 comics from the roster in the process, with zero notice.The nonprofit Stand Up for Stand Up posted a detailed breakdown of the data that outlines a 66% shrinkage in the SiriusXM Raw channel roster.“This month our payout checks were half what they normally are,” says Liz Miele, the comedian who organized the coordinated posting effort, “Next month they’re going to be zero.” Miele was one of the higher-paid comedians on the channel and had to be informed by her label, Ghost Runner, of what was on the horizon.

There is some odd backlash from commenters who have a hard time wrapping their mind around the idea of a creative working class and are calling the comics complainers, but the storm of posts itself was the result of failed negotiations between a group of independent comedy record labels and SiriusXM, and attempts to reach Maniscalco’s team to address the issue privately.The cuts were alarming because, contrary to the AI-fueled fractional-penny-mess of Spotify, SiriusXM often proved a significant source of revenue for middle-class or working-class comics, the kind who headline local comedy clubs and indie shows, open for larger theater or arena acts, and generally make their living off being on the road, pushing their bodies to be in front...