Sebastian Maniscalco, SiriusXM Urged To Restore Raw Dog Airplay

Sebastian Maniscalco isn’t widely viewed as a controversial comic — but he’s found himself in the hot seat this week, scrutinized over a recent SiriusXM changeover in which he’s prominently involved.

Earlier this year, as we first reported, the satellite radio provider replaced Raw Comedy, a long-running channel on its subscription service, with the 24/7 branded channel Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio. The announcement wasn’t an immediate lightning rod. But now, an online dialogue surrounding the change is gaining steam.

As argued in a new piece by nonprofit Stand Up for Stand Up, this evolution of SiriusXM’s comedy programming has been harmful to working-class comics who depended on Raw Dog airplay and the royalties that came with it. What’s happened, they’ve shown, is that airplay has become significantly concentrated among the industry’s upper echelon of comics — living and dead — impacting passive residual income going to comics at lower levels.

Maniscalco’s channel “is crushing middle class comedians who rely on payments from the company to pad income,” wrote comedian Matt Ruby in a Monday installment of his Substack Funny How: Letters to a Young Comedian. “Now some are fighting back. (Thanks to them!)”

Ruby linked to social posts from comics including Liz Miele and Greg Stone, who lay out the issue in full.

“This year, the Raw channel on SiriusXM became Sebastian Maniscalco’s channel. Great. Fine. Celebrities have taken over channels before. Never been an issue,” Miele says in a video posted to Instagram (view it here.)

“The problem is,” Miele explains, “Raw went from playing 800 working class comedians to now playing less than 300 celebrity comedians like Joan Rivers, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Norm Macdonald. Just dead comic, dead comic, dead comic, and then a plethora of very famous alive comedians that might not even know about this extra income that they’re about to receive.”

In contrast, Miele said, “every working-class comedian that has been kicked off the channel is quite aware” of the change.

“And it is devastating,” the comic says. “Because of this action, hundreds of comedians will no longer be able to have these royalties. Working class comedians, people that only make money on the road, that have no safety net, that depend on this money to just survive, are going from having that money to nothing.”

Previously, Miele said, Maniscalco was perhaps unaware of the impact that his SiriusXM rebrand is having on the broader comedy community. “But 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.”

In his own Instagram video post, titled “Sebastian Maniscalco Is Destroying Comedy,” comedian Greg Stone appealed to Maniscalco, as “one Italian coming to another Italian.”

“I’m going to assume you didn’t notice [the effects of the rebrand]. ‘Cause no Italian is going to take money out of the hardworking man’s pocket,” Stone says in the video. “This is not the way. We don’t respect money: we get money, we give it away. That is how we find value in ourselves, okay? Is by being extremely stupid with money.”

Stone said comedy fans may not notice the change at SiriusXM. They may, however, see more of their favorite comics “pumping gas, waiting tables,” instead of on stage, if working-class comedians’ relied-upon sources of revenue continue to dry up.

“We’re going to be in your house. We’ll be babysitting your children, okay? We’re going to be doing podcasts with your five-year-old,” Stone joked. “I guess it’s probably better for you guys, but for everybody else who doesn’t want to see every comedian begging for change outside of… a Piggly Wiggly, call SiriusXM and say, ‘Bring back Raw Dog.’ If you see Sebastian out there, be like, ‘Sebastian, aren’t you embarrassed? Little bit, Sebastian.’”

Sources close to SiriusXM acknowledged the legitimacy of comics’ concerns, given the service’s long history of investing in comedians at all career stages, and providing substantial royalties, as one of the big homes to comedy audio. However, Sirius — which operates fewer than 10 comedy channels out of a couple hundred spanning news, music and more — were said to view the rebrand as a necessary move to address underperformance on a channel that wasn’t meeting listenership expectations.

A SiriusXM spokesperson told us: “SiriusXM works together with our creative partners to program the best possible experience for our listeners. The launch of Sebastian Maniscalco’s Comedy Radio introduced a new creative direction and a regularly evolving programming mix for the channel, and SiriusXM continues to invest in comedians more than any other audio platform to deliver a wide range of comedy offerings across our channels.”

Deadline has reached out to reps for Maniscalco for comment; we’ll update the story if and when a statement comes in.