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Netflix head Ted Sarandos is once again sticking to his guns when it comes to the streamer’s comedy specials. During a conversation Friday at a Paley Media Council event in New York that TheWrap attended, the CEO defended giving comedy specials to both Dave Chappelle and Tony Hinchcliffe.

After the release of Chappelle’s 2021 special “The Closer,” the comedian came under fire for his jokes about the transgender community. Sarandos admitted that whether or not to stick by an artist are “never easy calls” and said that the decision to back Chappelle came down to “protecting free speech and free expression.”

“I knew that the art form itself always needed a safe place to try things out. Comedians define the culture in a bunch of ways, and they do that by figuring out where the lines are and the joke is,” the Netflix head explained during Friday’s “Beyond...

Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.

We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.

And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.

Podcasters are having a moment in the White House right now–and over on YouTube, too. Around this time last year, we saw a spike in podcast viewership right before the Super Bowl, with the Kelce brothers‘ podcast New Heights regularly hitting the top 5 in our Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report. This year, instead of sportsball podcasts, it’s entertainment and political shows, with...

In today’s hyper-sensitive comedy culture, everybody’s a critic — and everybody’s a club owner, too, so long as everybody can tape trash bags over their bedroom windows.

Look, the comedy industry is absolutely brutal toward its bottom rung, and despite the democratization of contemporary comedy platforms due to social media, getting any sort of comedy career off of the ground in 2025, either as a performer or a producer, requires a shameless ability to hustle and self-promote. Getting big in comedy requires one to make moves that are well-past what online haters who have never risked anything to achieve their dreams would consider cringe, and, as such, when an artist or aspiring comedy mogul over-markets themselves on the internet, it’s easy to mock them, criticize their business strategy and leave a one-star review on Google calling the weird bedroom open mic you paid $50 to watch a “complete scam.

Wayne Brady is known for his improvisational comedy skills, displayed many times on his popular television shows.

Among them are the hilarious Whose Line Is It Anyway? on ABC and the entertaining game show Let’s Make a Deal, which he hosts on CBS.

He recently took his impressive skills to the stage, joining other stars for Adam Ray’s holiday special.

Ray, a popular comedian, regularly dresses up and plays a funny version of Dr. Phil, and the resemblance is striking.

His Dr. Phil Live holiday show occurred at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood, California.

Ray and Brady were just a few comedians at the event, entertaining fans for the holiday season.

Ray praised Brady as ‘one of his heroes’ at his show

On Instagram, Adam Ray shared photos from his recent comedy show featuring the various stars who appeared with him.

The first image in the carousel presentation...

Far-right open mic host Tony Hinchcliffe has no apologies for the Black, Puerto Rican and Latino Americans he insulted on the national stage last month, but he can at least apologize to comedians for pretending to be one of them.

After Hinchcliffe performed an unoriginal, unfunny and racist stand-up set at the Madison Square Garden rally for Donald Trump on October 27, 2024, political commentators on both sides of the aisle objected to the Trump campaign’s decision to have a “roast comedian” represent the values of the once and future president. On the other hand, many members of the comedy community were elated to see the controversial Kill Tony host and the all-time worst stand-up to ever shoot a terrible Netflix special embarrass himself on such a massive, international stage.

One such comic who couldn’t wait to see Hinchcliffe eat absolute shit in front of the whole world is Anthony Jeselnik,...

Edison Research announces the Top 50 Podcasts in the U.S. based on reach for Q3 2024 among weekly podcast listeners age 13+.

The list ranks podcasts based on total audience reach from Edison Podcast Metrics. Interviews were conducted continuously throughout the quarter in English and Spanish. Rankings are based on listening over the full period. All respondents reported listening to podcasts in the last week.

Remaining in the same order in the Top 3 since the second quarter are The Joe Rogan Experience, Crime Junkie, and The Daily.

SmartLess, now part of the SiriusXM Podcast Network, breaks into the Top Five for the first time. MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories makes its debut in the Top 10 at #9.

In the Top 50 for the first time: Several new podcasts enter the Top 50 this quarter. The MeidasTouch Podcast rises to #28, driven by its daily election campaign coverage. The Lol Podcast enters the list at #32, reflecting...

The comic who caused a stir by slurring Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage” at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden campaign event in late October spent the subsequent episode of his podcast mocking the controversy and the media for treating the joke as a political liability.

“I apologize,” Hinchcliffe said on his Kill Tony live podcast with a small pause for impact at the top of the episode, “to absolutely nobody. Not to the Puerto Ricans, not to the whites, not to the Blacks, not to the Palestinians, not to the Jews and not to my own mother. I mocked my own mother during the set. Nobody clipped that. No headlines about me making fun of my own mother.”

Hinchcliffe was a guest comedian who opened Trump’s rally, appearing at the podium at the 19,500-seat venue stadium among several of Trump’s surrogates and advocates. The tone...

Now that the dust has settled from the biggest stand-up bomb of the 2024 election cycle, open mic host and right-wing provocateur Tony Hinchcliffe is ready to make amends with none of the entire races he insulted.

On Sunday, October 27th, the Kill Tony host performed at a rally for President-Elect Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, a stadium where Hinchcliffe had recently hosted an episode of his amateur comedian roast/Star Search podcast. Hinchcliffe found the new crowd at Msg to be less enthused about his half-baked, predictable, sub-4chan-level racist humor than his usual crowd, and by Monday morning, his laughless routine was front-page news on every media outlet in the country. Hinchcliffe’s hacky jokes about Black people carving watermelons on Halloween, Latino people having a lot of kids and Puerto Rico being an island of garbage failed to impress even the furthest-right pundits like Ann Coulter, and...

Since Donald Trump won the presidential election, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe has been gloating a bit on social media over the fact that his Madison Square Garden performance was not the disaster for the campaign that many predicted.

He’s also not apologizing for his set at the October 27 Trump rally, in which he called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage” and made other racist jokes. Trump and his campaign tried to distance themselves from Hinchcliffe’s performance afterward.

The latest Kill Tony podcast, recorded the night after the Msg event, showed that while he refused to back away from his remarks, he acknowledged that the set may not have been the right venue. He also seemed to equate criticism of what he said to an attack on his free speech.

“It was a speech about free speech, believe it or not, and with that said, I just want to...

Comedian and “Kill Tony” podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe ignited a national firestorm with his appearance at Donald Trump’s Oct. 27 rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. While endorsing Trump for president via a comedy set, Hinchcliffe made a joke in which he referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.” Widespread backlash ensued, with prominent Hollywood figures such as Bad Bunny, Jennifer Lopez and Aubrey Plaza slamming Hinchcliffe for the racist joke.

Hinchcliffe has now debuted the latest episode of “Kill Tony,” which was recorded the night after his appearance at the Trump rally amid the height of backlash against him. He responded amid the joke controversy by admitting that perhaps a Trump rally was not the best venue for this comedy set, although Hinchcliffe was adamant that he will not apologize.

“Last night I gave a speech, I don’t know if you heard about this,...

Joe Rogan said he previously warned Tony Hinchcliffe about his Puerto Rico joke, telling him “that’s the one that’s gonna get you stabbed.”

Hinchcliffe, an insult comic best known for hosting the live podcast “Kill Tony,” sparked outrage Sunday when he appeared at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and told a joke that referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage.”

“I’ve gotta tell you, that joke kills at comedy clubs. I don’t like the joke, [but] it kills,” Rogan said on Wednesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “It’s just like, if you’re Puerto Rican and you hear that in the audience, you’re like [groans]. But it’s a funny joke. The joke does well. But I said to him, I go, ‘Dude, that’s the one that’s gonna get you stabbed.’ And he used to talk about it on stage,...

Open mic host and Donald Trump rally speaker Tony Hinchcliffe isn’t the first conservative comic to use “edgy” humor to promote a racist and fascist ideology, and he won’t be the last. He’s also not the funniest.

On Sunday, Hinchcliffe took the stage at Madison Square Garden, a venue he’s now played four times in his comedy career, and he treated the horde of tens of thousands of Trump fans as if they were the usual audience of his popular podcast and live show Kill Tony. In his 12-minute set, Hinchcliffe targeted Latin Americans, Black Americans and the entire island of Puerto Rico with his signature, predictable and uninspired brand of insult comedy. When the performance not only fell flat in the room but sparked backlash across the American media and electorate, Hinchcliffe made the same excuse that every hack comic like himself uses whenever they...

Podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe’s hackish, hate-filled roast comedy set may have failed spectacularly at the rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden on Sunday, but it would have killed at the Krusty Komedy Klassic.

One of the best running bits on The Simpsons that’s been going strong since Season One is the how the city of Springfield’s most popular comedian and entertainer, Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustofsky, also known as Krusty the Clown, is a painfully unoriginal hack and an utter degenerate with dubious morals. Honestly, the clown would be the perfect host for a podcast and live show called Kill Krusty, if there weren’t a significant chance that a certain Sideshow character would take the title literally.

In real life, America’s most pathetic and unfunny clown who has somehow achieved national notoriety is the right-wing host of Kill Tony, whose performance in front of...

The Kill Tony fans who are brave enough to speak out on behalf of the embattled host are claiming that it’s okay for Tony Hinchcliffe to trash all the races he hates at a political rally because he’s a roast comedian — Bill Burr preferred to call him a “fucking cunt.”

On Sunday, the right-leaning open mic host bombed so bad during an ill-conceived stand-up set at the Donald Trump rally in Madison Square Garden that it’s already costing Trump votes in swing states as Puerto Rican Americans (or just Americans) didn’t take kindly to one of Trump’s keynote speakers calling Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

However, for as much as voters and pundits have criticized Hinchcliffe’s racist attacks on Puerto Rico, Latino Americans, Black Americans, women and every other demographic besides white men like himself, the group that found Hinchcliffe’s disastrous...

While other comedians raced to kick Tony Hinchcliffe in the crotch after his hate-filled, racist “stand-up routine” at a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden, at least one of his comedy brothers is standing up for him.

Well, sort of.

On last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart laughed at the hand-wringing by news pundits, assembling a montage of talking heads decrying Hinchcliffe’s remarks as “unfunny, racist, cringeworthy jokes,” “the most repulsive racial jokes about Latinos,” “disgusting and hateful,” “so incredibly crude,” “frankly, just too X-rated to play here” and “extremely vile so-called jokes.”

Stewart didn’t exactly disagree with the assessment, but asked a pertinent question: Just what did people expect?

“Obviously, in retrospect, having a roast comedian come to a political rally a week before Election Day and roasting a key voting demographic — probably not the best decision by the campaign politically,” Stewart said. “But, to be fair,...

New data from Tubular Labs -- the social video analytics firm quantifying trends for platforms, creators, brands + more --shows growing trends around podcast promotion...

Podcasters know that there is just too much monetization potential on social to pass up when promoting their shows. Tubular's audience ratings data, that deduplicates minutes watched and unique viewers across YouTube and Facebook, is showing an increasing number of podcasters are publishing long portions of episodes or entire episodes altogether.

According to Tubular’s Audience Ratings, analysis of the top U.S. podcasters by domestic minutes watched across YouTube and Facebook found:

Kill Tony took the No. 1 spot by sharing full episodes on social, earning 933.5 million U.S. minutes watched across YouTube and Facebook – up 21% month-over-month and 238% on the year. Other popular podcasters like Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay, Joe Rogan and Theo Von have made similar moves sharing full episodes or long clips to great effect.

Comic and podcaster Marc Maron is calling out his peers who use their positions to drive what he terms “the new fascism” just a day after right-wing comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made racist and sexist jokes at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally.

Other comics also slammed Hinchcliffe who, among other things, called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Tweeted Michael Ian Black, “I think America just found its next Jim Breuer!”

Maron’s statement, posted in full on his Wtf With Marc Maron website and shared in part on social media, did not specifically name Hinchcliffe, but the message seems clear.

Writes Maron: “The anti-woke flank of the new fascism is being driven almost exclusively by comics, my peers. Whether or not they are self-serving or true believers in the new fascism is unimportant. They are of the movement. Whether they see themselves as acolytes or just comics doesn’t matter.

Marc Maron rebuked the comics he believes are driving the “anti-woke flank of the new fascism” in a short essay pointedly shared after comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made several racist jokes at Donald Trump’s rally in New York City yesterday.

Maron set up this point by arguing that he believes that “what is brewing in this country is an American fascist movement rooted half in grievance and half in Jesus and enabled by tech oligarchs and an inundation of propaganda from many sources.” One major source, he seemed to argue,...

Marc Maron has called out “comedians with podcasts” who “joke around” with “shameless, self-proclaimed white supremacists and fascists on their show,” saying, “all it does is humanize and normalize fascism.”

“When someone uses their platform for that reason they are facilitating anti-American sentiment and promoting violent autocracy,” he wrote in a blog post shared to social media.

While Maron did not call out anyone by name, the post comes three days after Joe Rogan, whose “Joe Rogan Experience” is the No. 1 podcast in the U.S. on Spotify and Apple, released an episode with guest Donald Trump. Maron has hosted his own widely popular podcast, “Wtf With Marc Maron,” since 2009.

“Even though I do not do a political show I have been very clear in my specials and on the podcast that I believe, and have believed for years, what is brewing in this country is an American fascist movement...

Maga comedian and open mic host Tony Hinchcliffe is currently under fire for performing a poorly received stand-up set at last night’s rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, but are we really sure that he wrote the “Puerto Rico is an island of garbage” joke all by himself?

In the Joe-Rogan-centric bro comedy community, the most serious allegation a comedian can face is for another more successful comic to accuse them of joke theft. Famously, Rogan ended Carlos Mencia’s mainstream career with an attack campaign that came loaded with a bibliography and a compilation edit of Mencia telling jokes that were eerily similar to bits that comedians such as George Lopez, Bob Levy, Bobby Lee and Ari Shaffir performed first. However, when the late, great Norm Macdonald accused the Kill Tony host who just made front page news with a boring, hack and racist set at...

Right now, open mic host Tony Hinchcliffe is the most famous comedian in America despite never once being the funniest comic on his own show.

Last night, the 40-year-old standup and podcaster from Youngstown, Ohio took the stage at a rally for Donald Trump in Madison Square Garden, an historic venue where he hosted a special live episode of his podcast and comedy show Kill Tony back in August. On Kill Tony, which Hinchcliffe typically hosts in Austin, Texas, Hinchcliffe and a panel of manosphere stand-up comics such as Shane Gillis and Joe Rogan invite amateur comedians to perform one minute of standup comedy while Hinchcliffe and his friends roast them and riff amongst themselves. But while Hinchcliffe played his previous Msg performances in front of a crowd that came to see his mean-spirited, anti-woke and anti-originality style of comedy, the Austin comedy scene’s most powerful gate-keeper was surprised...

The View co-host Sunny Hostin had a few things to say about one of the incendiary speakers at Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Sunday-night campaign rally at Madison Square Garden.

During said rally, Tony Hinchcliffe — “a touring stand up comedian based out of Los Angeles,” per his bio, and “host of the popular live podcast Kill Tony” — remarked, “There’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it’s called Puerto Rico.”

More from TVLineJon Stewart Defends Tony Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rico Jokes at Trump Rally But Questions Wisdom of Having...

Tony Hinchcliffe has been an important figure in the Comedy Central community and has recently found immense success with his podcast Kill Tony. Unfortunately, the 40-year-old comic has been facing the heat lately after his recent appearance at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which left thousands of Latin Americans in complete rage and a few political figures disgusted.

Tony Hinchcliffe | Credits: @tonyhinchcliffe via Instagram

The 60th quadrennial presidential elections are not too far along. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have been battling it out to earn themselves a chance to lead one of the world’s greatest nations. But Hinchcliffe’s “floating island garbage” comment regarding Puerto Rico might have cost Trump the entire race, and it also pushed one pop star to his absolute limit.

Bad Bunny savagely responds to Tony Hinchcliffe’s distasteful comments on Puerto Rico Tony Hinchcliffe | Credits: @tonyhinchcliffe via Instagram

Hurricane Maria nearly...

Controversial comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made several racist comments about Latinos at former President Donald Trump’s rally on Sunday at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

“I welcome migrants to the United States of America with open arms. And by open arms I mean like this,” Hinchcliffe said, waving his hands “no,” then waving his hands forward to indicate that they should go away.

He continued: “It’s wild. And these Latinos, they love making babies, too, just know that. They do. They do. There’s no pulling out.

Adam Ray is bringing his Dr. Phil parody to Netflix with a wild new special in which the comedian — dressed as the mustachioed talk show host — will come face to face with Dr. Phil himself.

Debuting on Netflix on Nov. 19, the untitled “Adam Ray’s Dr. Phil Comedy Special” will also see Ray-as-Phil interview special guests including Patton Oswalt, Jay Pharoah and “Gollum,” and get to know the audience through silly questions and games.

Ray’s “Dr. Phil Live!” had become one of the hottest tickets at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles before the comedian took it on the road across America. The show will soon expand beyond the United States.

The Netflix special marks the first time the real Dr. Phil has sat down in person with Ray.

The comedian will next take “Dr. Phil Live!” to the New York Comedy Festival on Nov. 15, where he will be headlining at the Beacon Theatre.

It’s been five years since stand-up star Shane Gillis spent a total of five days as a cast member of Saturday Night Live, but Lorne Michaels still can’t believe that the show’s fanbase didn’t want to spend every Saturday night watching Gillis awkwardly mumble slurs at his co-stars.

The ascension of Saturday Night Live’s shortest-tenured cast member from podcasting microcelebrity to bona fide streaming star following the events of his 2019 hired-to-fired speedrun makes us wonder whether Gillis could have accomplished nearly as much in his already-impressive comedy career had SNL retained him through its 45th season and beyond. Between his Netflix series Tires, his streaming special Shane Gillis: Beautiful Dogs and his deification among the vaguely conservative anti-woke comedy crowd, Gillis is currently in command of a larger following than those of all but the most all-time-beloved SNL cast members, and it’s hard to...

Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.

We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.

And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.

If our last Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report was all about scientists, this week’s is a return to the old guard, with MrBeast back in spot #1 and podcasts slurping up spots #2 and #3. Then we’ve got a gas station run from FaZe Clan and…we’ll keep the bonus vid a secret for now.

Check ’em all out below:

#1 Men Vs Women Survive...

Just because today’s big headline — “Nikki Glaser to Host the Golden Globes” — feels like it was inevitable, that doesn’t make it any less exciting or deserved.

In May, comedian Nikki Glaser wiped the annoyingly-perfect smile right off of Tom Brady’s smug, beautiful face at Netflix’s live-streaming event “The Roast of Tom Brady.” Though a case could be made that Tony Hinchcliffe (“Kill Tony”) or possibly even Andrew Schulz had (marginally) better jabs, it was Glaser who grabbed the headlines. And then she kept grabbing them: Rave reviews of her monologue by viewers and critics — and most importantly, her fellow comics — led to a whirlwind of press requests for Glaser, including here at IndieWire.

In many of those interviews, Glaser was asked about hosting a primetime awards show. She was in, she said, and now she’s in as host of the 82nd Golden Globe Awards. What...

Maybe you haven’t caught comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Kill Tony podcast yet, but live broadcasts of his improvised talent show sold out Madison Square Garden this month — twice.

The show, tangentially part of the Joe Rogan-verse and usually recorded at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership in Austin, Texas, features Hinchcliffe, co-host Brian Redban and a collection of guest comedians serving as a judging panel for stand-up comics willing to trade exposure for potentially blistering critiques. Comics sometimes bomb, but the ones that kill can go on to bigger and better things (like appearing with Hinchcliffe at Madison Square Garden).

“I feel like I haven’t even begun to come down yet,” Hinchcliffe told Pollstar after the Msg run. “It makes me feel more human getting a call from Andrew Dice Clay, saying, ‘That was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been having trouble sleeping because of the adrenaline.

Studio71, a top podcast network for digital-first creators and brands, is adding Club Random with Bill Maher to its roster of shows. Studio71 will team up with Maher and his Club Random Studios’ co-founders Chris Case and Chuck Labella to drive advertising and growth opportunities for the show. Additionally, Studio71 will support the launch of new podcasts produced under the Club Random Studios banner. The deal was announced today by Adam Boorstin, Co-CEO of Studio71.

"Club Random" showcases Maher in dynamic, hour-long one-on-one interviews with stars across entertainment, politics, music, and more.The incredible guests include Quentin Tarantino, Sheryl Crow, Jerry Seinfeld, Jordan Peterson, Nikki Glaser, Seth MacFarlane, Ice Cube, Jillian Michaels, Dana White, and Bill Burr, who have appeared on Club Random to share their thoughts and enjoy drinks with Maher.

Studio71 will support distribution of the show, which releases episodes in both audio and video formats, as well as manage podcast advertising,...

Welcome to our rundown of the most-watched branded YouTube videos of the week.

We’re publishing this snippet of a larger Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report in order to analyze sponsorship trends in the creator economy. Any video launched in tandem with an official brand partner is eligible for the ranking.

And – as the name up above would imply – all the data comes from Gospel Stats. If you’re interested in learning more about Gospel – and which brands are sponsoring what creators on YouTube – click here.

There’s demons everywhere in this week’s Gospel Stats Weekly Brand Report, and by that we mean there’s Sam and Colby locked in a haunted asylum (that may or may not have a demon in it), but there’s also working out (ugh) and some truly incredible The Mask-level makeup jobs in the latest episode of Kill Tony, where faux Trump and...

Undeniably, Isaac Hirsch is gathering a following with his humble but comedic interaction with Ken Jennings. Recently, Jeopardy! Champion, Isaac’s past standup routines have resurfaced. Now fans are rolling after seeing his hilarity during the acts.

Isaac Hirsch Is Winning Over Fans

On Wednesday, July 3, Isaac Hirsh started his reign as the current champion and continued to nab his ninth win on July 15. When Isaac came to the Jeopardy! stage it wasn’t long before fans realized he was more than just brains. One of the most lovable things about Isaac is his humor. Although he is playing great in the game, he is matching it with his witty comedy as well. Some fans are comparing him to another beloved competitor, Sam Buttrey. But now when his previous standup comedies pop up, fans can’t help but love him more.

Isaac Hirsch on Jeopardy! | YouTube Jeopardy! Isaac Hirsch’s Standup Act Pops Up,...

Studio71, a leading global media company for digital-first creators and brands, has signed an exclusive distribution, ad sales and marketing agreement with comedian Bobbi Althoff for her celebrity interview podcast The Really Good Podcast. Studio71 will sell podcast advertising and integrated brand partnerships across both audio and video starting with the launch of its third season later this summer. Having debuted in April 2023, the podcast quickly became a phenomenon, consistently ranking at the top of the podcast charts with Althoff's engaging interviews racking up over 1 billion views and 235 million likes to date.

Althoff started her career posting comedic videos on TikTok in 2021 and rapidly built an engaged audience of more than 11 million social followers. After launching her podcast, Althoff has cemented herself in the comedy space with a fresh approach to celebrity interviews. She replaces the standard podcast Q&As with a unique blend of deadpan humor and self-deprecating anecdotes...

Exclusive: This year, comedian Adam Ray has something special in store for his June 16 birthday — the introduction of his third special, Like and Subscribe, which will debut on YouTube on that date before arriving on VOD platforms June 18.

Filmed in Madison, Wi, the special comes at a time when Ray’s popularity has reached new heights, in part due to his success with a satirical take, in full prosthetics, on daytime talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw — as seen in his digital series, Dr. Phil Live!. Produced by 800 Pound Gorilla Media, his new hour covers everything from awkward flight to his rapper brother-in law, Disneyland etiquette, and his childhood dream.

Currently picking up close to 20,000 new YouTube subscribers per month, and over one million views the week of new releases, Ray has garnered over 50 million views across multiple platforms since the launch of Dr. Phil Live! in August 2023. The consummate character actor,...

Is there a rule book for comedy? It’s a question igniting fiery debates, especially in today’s era of “cancel culture” dictating the dos and don’ts of stand-up. But for Tony Hinchcliffe, the idea of conforming to these restrictions is as likely as finding a unicorn at a rodeo.

“There’s no room for victim mentality here,” Hinchcliffe tells Variety. “When you step into a dark, dingy comedy club, what do you want to see? Think about it like a strip club. Do you want to see girls in a dress? Or do you want to see nasty fucking shit? You want ping-pong balls flying at your head.”

Hinchcliffe sits back in a golden chair for his Zoom interview, rocking a plain white T-shirt and basketball shorts, reminiscing about his days as the class clown. He was born and raised on the rough and tumble streets of Youngstown,...

Netflix is bringing back its “Netflix Is a Joke Fest,” which so far has lined up more than 300 live events across 35 venues in Los Angeles. The event, last held in 2022, will include Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, Nate Bargatze and Sebastian Maniscalco in a night of comedy at the Hollywood Bowl; also holding stand-up shows there are Bill Burr, John Mulaney, Seth Rogen, Matt Rife, Kevin Hart, Trevor Noah and a joint show with Taylor Tomlinson, Sarah Silverman, Nikki Glaser and Michelle Buteau.

Netflix produces the festival with Live Nation; this year’s event will take place from May 2 to May 12, 2024. Besides the Bowl, other venues on tap include The Greek, The Dolby, The Forum, The Palladium, Orpheum Theatre and The Wiltern, as well as well as comedy venues including The Hollywood Improv, Largo, Laugh Factory and The Comedy Store.

“This is a special time for comedy, both for Netflix and the genre at large,...

“Unvaxxed Sperm” reads the poster held aloft by a woman standing outside the theater, and you know you’re in the right place: Joe Rogan’s new comedy club mecca. On Austin’s historic Sixth Street, Comedy Mothership enjoyed its opening night after two-and-a-half years of development.

Comedy Mothership is the comedian and podcaster’s effort to launch what he’s described as an ideal venue for comics and an effort to terraform the Texas capitol into a major live comedy hub. When tickets for the opening week of shows went on sale (for a surprisingly reasonable $40 per person), they sold out within minutes. Tickets are being re-sold online for $500.

“I’m drunk and on mushrooms in my new club!” exclaimed Rogan while wearing a rather odd Obi-Wan-like sweater. “This is as high as I’ve ever been onstage. I need to connect with this moment … You can’t fire me from my own club,...