Celebrity comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has responded to this week's uproar in the comedy community over his takeover of a SiriusXM channel that for years supported up-and-coming stand-ups while providing them a minor lifeline in royalty checks. He joins the broadcaster in ****** uring those up in arms over the station's disappearance that the company axed it well before the superstar took over.
In April, Maniscalco's Comedy Radio replaced SiriusXM's Channel 99, the longtime home of the Raw Comedy/Raw Dog channel, a small corner of the satellite radio giant where up-and-coming comedians could not only launch their careers but make a few bucks doing it. SiriusXM replaced the "jukebox channel," which rotated sets from comics and had no host, with one now "curated and headlined by Maniscalco" that features mostly mainstream and well-known talent. The uproar came this week when the advocacy group Stand Up for Standup and big-name comedians like Patton Oswalt, Margaret Cho and Michelle Wolf took to social media to ask Maniscalco to bring Raw Comedy back to the platform. On Thursday, the superstar comic replied.
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